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Consolation
Consolation
Jul 13, 2025 11:50 PM

Author:Michael Redhill

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...

Reviews

Richly textured ... sumptuously wrought ... The tone is one of sweet melancholy, and the ebbs and flows of loving relationships are acutely rendered. Not only this, but the evocation of [the] era is irresistible

—— Daily Telegraph

Complex, poetic, heartfelt and most beautifully written

—— The Times

Absorbing ... Redhill has artistic sense and nerve

—— New York Times

Compassionate and beautifully written

—— Woman & Home

In making fiction out of the excesses of his Puritan ancestors, Hawthorne anticipated the technique of a modern movie-director. He was a master of crowd scenes

—— Financial Times

[Nathaniel Hawthorne] recaptured, for his New England, the essence of Greek tragedy

—— Malcolm Cowley

A genius ... Elusive, delicate but lasting

—— Alan Ayckbourn

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

—— Stephen Fry

Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in

—— Evelyn Waugh

Lovely

—— Daily Telegraph

Moving and intelligent

—— Independent

Magnetic, unpretentious and bursting with one-liners

—— Cosmopolitan

Jewell's readability and emotional intelligence make her the cream of pop fiction

—— Glamour

Fans of chick-lit will understand when I say that this is a book you simply disappear into

—— Sunday Telegraph
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