Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #314617 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Review
The death of a prominent but scandalized scholar prompts a search for a photographic record of early Toronto in Redhill's second novel (Martin Sloane, 2002), in which narrative leaps between the 19th and 20th centuries.When David Hollis, wracked by Lou Gehrig's disease, committed suicide in the summer of 1997, he left behind a broken reputation. Shortly before dying, the "forensic geologist" authored a monograph claiming that a ship buried in the heart of downtown Toronto contained photographs of the entire city in the 1850s, but his refusal to show the diary he cited as evidence sparked accusations that he made up the whole thing. Hoping to rescue his honor, his grieving widow, Marianne, takes up residence in a hotel room overlooking the parcel of land where the photos are allegedly buried-and where a sports stadium is about to be built. High-strung and contentious, she regularly does battle with John, her daughter's fiance, the sole person who knows about her vigil. The book alternates between Marianne's story and that of Jem Hallam, a pharmacist who moves to Toronto from England in 1855; after Hallam's attempt to run an apothecary nearly bankrupts him (it turns out he purchased the shop from a man who accidentally caused three people to overdose), he becomes one of the city's earliest and most prolific photographers. The Hallam sections feature the novel's best-drawn characters, including Samuel Ennis, the entrepreneurial but ailing man who introduces Jem to the photo trade, and Claudia Rowe, a down-on-her-luck widow who becomes his assistant. Redhill's descriptions of early Toronto are warmly romantic while still capturing a hard-bitten frontier-times attitude. The modern-day portions of the book are weaker by comparison-Marianne and John are relatively undernourished characters who often behave in ways that drive the plot but feel unnatural, which makes the concluding revelations feel underwhelming. Not a failure-it's a worthy successor to Richard Powers's similarly time-shifting novel, Gain-but its seams occasionally show. (Kirkus Reviews)

From the Publisher
A remarkable exploration of the power of place, home and memory, by the acclaimed author of Martin Sloane.

From the Inside Flap
As he slips beneath the waves of Toronto's harbour, Professor David Hollis follows in death the man he pursued in the last months of his life, English apothecary J.G. Hallam.

One hundred and fifty years earlier, Hallam had been sent by his father to open a shop in the New World, but when that business failed, he became a reluctant partner in a photography firm. In 1856, the company was offered the opportunity to work for the municipal government, and the bleak and ungainly young city took shape before Hallam's lens. But after presenting the photographs in England, Hallam's ship sank in a violent storm on Lake Ontario and the strongbox holding the photographs was lost.

The shoreline of the harbour has shifted dramatically over a century and a half, and David Hollis, driven in his pursuit of this important historical record, speculates that the sunken ship containing the photographs is in the landfill where the city's new Union Arena is to be built. With almost no one on his side but his daughter's fiancé, John Lewis, Hallam presents his findings, which are met with howls of derision from his colleagues. Three months later, he's dead, and Lewis joins the grieving widow, Marianne, in a furtive, unsettling quest to vindicate her husband. Installed in a hotel overlooking the excavation site where the arena is to stand, they await the moment when a piece of the past reappears that might alleviate the anguish of these civic and private vanishings.

Exquisitely crafted and masterfully told, Michael Redhill's haunting new book moves seamlessly between Toronto's past and present, depicting the way time alters the contours of even the things we hold most certain. Consolation evokes the mysteries of love and memory, and what suffering the absence of a beloved truly means.