2003 short list:
The Song Beneath
the Ice
by Joe Fiorito
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
At a reception held at Toronto City Hall on September 17, Joe Fiorito was presented with a cheque for $11,000 as the 30th Anniversary winner of the Toronto Book Awards.
"The Song Beneath the Ice is as much a fascinating and compelling mystery, as it is a beautiful and touching de-construct of the creative process itself," says John R. Farrell, chair of the 2003 City of Toronto Book Award Jury. "It is a powerful and haunting read, rich in its depictions of Toronto and its scenes, and a book filled with equal doses of art and heart."
The Song Beneath the Ice
A year after concert pianist Dominic Amoruso's mysterious disappearance during a private recital in Toronto, his friend, the journalist Joe Serafino, receives a package of Dom's tapes and notebooks from a place called Wolf Cove on Baffin Island. By transcribing the tapes and matching them with entries in the notebooks, Joe slowly pieces together the story of what happened to his friend.
Dom grew up in the deep shadow of Glenn Gould - and in the shadow of expectations that he carry on Gould's heritage. It is a burden he struggles and argues with constantly, challenging Gould's decisions even as his own identity as a musician disintegrates. Freely popping a variety of pills to ward off migraines and other, more existential pains, Dom confides only in his tape recorder. When Joe starts nosing around, he finds that Dom's friends, such as the music store owner Buddy Keane, the photographer Carol Paterson, and his lover, Claire Weller, are either as perplexed as he is by Dom's sudden disappearance or annoyed by the journalist's interest.
Fiorito has woven his novel from the separate strands of Dom's tapes and notebooks and from Joe's investigation into the pianist's story. The story takes us from downtown Toronto's Vietnamese restaurants and homeless shelters to seal-skinning contests on Baffin Island.
Joe Fiorito
Photo by Kristine Krombholtz |
Joe Fiorito is the author of Comfort Me With Apples, first published in 1994, and Tango on the Main (1996), a selection of his city columns from the Montreal Gazette. His family memoir, The Closer We Are to Dying, published in 1999, was a national best seller and earned the author further critical acclaim. Guy Vanderhaeghe called it "a remarkable memoir, perhaps the finest by a Canadian writer since John Glassco's Memoirs of Montparnasse appeared in 1970." Fiorito lives in Toronto and writes for the Toronto Star. |
Excerpt from The Song Beneath the Ice
"I have covered the police beat on occasion. I made a call or two later in the day and learned that tracker dogs would be sent to sniff through the ravines. When the police understood that I knew Dom well and could be trusted not to get in the way, I was given permission to tag along.
And so we explored the nearest reaches of the city wilderness: under a dusting of early snow, the cold remains of the camp--fires of the homeless; the dry white skull of a dog long dead; lifeless sleeping bags in empty pup tents, the occupants gone begging; and the usual litter of the ravines - empty bottles, empty tins and jars, empty rusted shopping carts.
In the thick underbrush of the Don Valley we came upon three sculptures made of dried vines, scraps of metal, twists of scavenged copper wire. The sculptor, one of the more talented of the bush hermits, had fashioned a life--sized horse, a giant bird with spreading wings, and a twig--man who stood pointing with one arm at the Bloor St. Viaduct. We walked with the dogs along the base of it. Dom had not jumped. Or at least, as the cops noted dryly, he had not jumped there.
The Harbour Police were instructed to patrol the shore of the lake from Sunnyside to the Beach; nothing. The tugboat captains who worked the Cherry St. slip were asked to keep their eyes open; now and then, as they churn the shallow water of the inner harbour, they disturb a body. Not much traffic on the lakes right now, but I'll call if anything turns up! said one of the captains, a joker.
The hospital emergency rooms had of course been checked, as had the cheap hotels and the shelters - because Dom could be lost and wandering, because he could be at risk. And so it was that the ill, the mad, the homeless, and the art and music crowds - everyone in Toronto - were aware that Dominic Amoruso, concert pianist, had walked off stage and disappeared, could not be found, had left no note, was gone."1
1From The Song Beneath the Ice by Joe Fiorito. Published by McClelland & Stewart Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
