Consolation

Cover Type: Hardcover
Book Condition: Fine
Jacket Condition: Fine
Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd
Publisher Place: London
Publisher Year: 2007
Edition: First Edition

Description: 469 pages. Book and Jacket appear to have hardly been read and are both in Fine condition throughout.

Publishers Description: As he slips beneath the waves of Torontos 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 Hallams lens. But after presenting the photographs in England, Hallams 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 citys new Union Arena is to be built. With almost no one on his side but his daughters fiance, John Lewis, Hallam presents his findings, which are met with howls of derision from his colleagues. Three months later, hes 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 Redhills haunting new book moves seamlessly between Torontos 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.

ISBN: 9780434011797