Consolation: A Novel - Tapa dura

With the help of her daughter's fiancé, widow Marianne Hollis sets out to make her husband's last dream a reality by uncovering a treasure trove of missing glass negatives that represent the earliest pictures ever taken of Toronto, in a novel that moves back and forth between the present and the past, into the life of the photographer who took the pictures more than a century and a half earlier.

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.

"From the Hardcover edition."