Toronto Book Awards 2002 short list:
Martin Sloane
by Michael Redhill
Published by Doubleday Canada
This biographical information and excerpt is posted courtesy of Doubleday Canada.
Martin Sloane
Jolene Iolas, a student in upstate New York, encounters Martin Sloane's art while visiting a Toronto gallery, and eventually the two become lovers. Introduced to a constancy of life she has never known, Jolene relaxes into the rituals of being someone's other half.
And then, without warning, without a word, he vanishes. There is no hint of his fate. The shock slowly hardening into fact, Jolene sheds her life, losing everything, including her oldest friend, to inexpressible grief.
Ten years pass, and Jolene learns to stop trying to make sense of her abandonment. Then, when her new life is settling into order, word comes from her long-estranged friend that someone named Sloane has been exhibiting artworks in Irish galleries. Jolene travels to Ireland, where she is reluctantly reunited with the old friend. Together, the two women become lost in an a jumble of pasts as they try to piece together what happened to Martin Sloane.
Michael Redhill
Michael Redhill was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1966, but has lived in Toronto most of his life. Educated at Indiana University, York University and the University of Toronto, he graduated in 1991 with a BA in English Literature. He is a poet, playwright and novelist, as well as an editor. He has published five collections of poetry and his first novel, Martin Sloane. In 2000, he won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play for Building Jerusalem. Redhill lives in Toronto with his partner Anne, and their two sons, Benjamin and Maxime. Apart from his writing, he works as the managing editor of Brick, A Literary Journal.
Martin Sloane - excerpt
"When I was twenty-five, the man I loved walked out of my home late one night and vanished. No one ever saw him again. There are no words for this.
Impressions of that night are burnt into memory. Something I had said? A look on Molly's face. Embracing her, holding his hand walking into the house, the moon through willows. Always this order of memory, returning to it, looking for the crack where the light can push through, the one cell bursting gold with revelation. Later, twined in bed, music drifting past outside on a car radio. A door opening, feet on gravel. History urging itself into being. At dawn, calling his name from the doorway. Motionless in the reading chair. Standing at the window. Later, roaring in the dark, on my knees under the stars. Wet grass against my cheek, eyes staved open, the river audible through the trees."
