Consolation

It is 1856, Toronto. Unable to make a living in the New World from his trade, English apothecary J.G. Hallam takes up the new science of photography, and embarks on a grand project to document the bleak young city. But returning from an exhibition of these images in England, Hallam's ship is lost in a violent storm on Lake Ontario - and the strongbox holding the photographs is lost.

A century and a half later, and the shoreline of the harbour has shifted dramatically. Professor David Hollis speculates that the sunken ship containing this important historical record lies in the landfill where the city's new Union Arena is to be built. But his findings are met only with howls of derision from his colleagues.

Three months later, Hollis is dead - and his grieving widow, Marianne, embarks on a furtive, unsettling quest to vindicate her husband. From her hotel room overlooking the excavation site where the arena is to stand, she watches and waits for a piece of the past to reappear that might alleviate the anguish of these civic and private vanishings...

Michael Redhill is the publisher and one of the editors of Brick, a literary magazine, and the author of the novel Martin Sloane, a finalist for the 2001 Giller Prize, and the short story collection Fidelity. He has also written four poetry collections, including Asphodel, published in 1997, and Light-Crossing, published in 2001. His most recent works for the theatre are Goodness and Building Jerusalem, winner of a Dora Award.

Consolation, Redhill’s second novel, was shortlisted for the 2007 Toronto Book Award. In an interview with the Edmonton Journal, he described how he was inspired by a real photograph taken in thirteen parts in the winter of 1856 as part of a campaign to entice Queen Victoria to choose the city as the capital of pre-Confederation Canada: “I knew there was something in the pictures I wanted to write about. But the more I scribbled things down, the more I began to recognize a resonance between that dead city, no stitch of which exists anymore, and modern Toronto. The attitude and striving is still prevalent.” He adds: “It’s a strange, self-loathing city that at the same time is constantly striving to be world class and noticed. The city never tends to think about its own needs; it thinks about what other people might find impressive.”

Michael Redhill lives with his partner and their two sons in France.