Martin Sloane

(Paperback)

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Description

A stunning first novel, a huge critical success and a bestseller in Canada, which explores the power of memory, love and art. In 1984, Jolene Iolas, a student in upstate New York, encounters Martin Sloane's work while visiting a Toronto gallery. She strikes up a correspondence with the older artist, and eventually they become lovers. And then, without warning, without a word, he vanishes. There is no hint of his fate, no chain of cause and effect to be followed. Over the following months, Jolene sheds her life, losing everything, including her oldest friend, Molly, to her grief. Ten years pass, and Jolene begins to live with Martin's disappearance. But then the opportunity to confront her ghost arises. Word comes from, of all people, Molly, that someone named Sloane has been exhibiting in Irish galleries. Jolene travels to Dublin, where she is reluctantly reunited with her old friend. Together, the two women become lost in a jumble of pasts as they try to piece together what happened to Martin Sloane. Seamlessly crafted and beautifully written, Martin Sloane evokes the mysteries of love and art, the weight of history, and what it means to bear memory for the missing and the dead.

Reviews

It is rare to read a novel that pulses with such pleasure that you don't want it to end, but this is what Redhill's debut delivers * Independent *
A deeply moving first novel... profound and full of affection. It is a book of constant surprises. * Michael Ondaatje *
Beautifully structured, and shards of cleverness and humour run through it... hard to put down * TLS *
Reading "Martin Sloane" made me feel melancholic, hopeful, amused, energized, enlightened, unnerved, touched, and finally grateful that occasionally a writer comes along who gets real life just right. * New York Times *
Redhill [has] a gift for studied lyricism, a complex kind of emotional intelligence and, most of all, a poet's understanding of the workings of time... a powerful meditation on the implications of memory and the vacancies opened up by the loss of love... Redhill paces this sad and oblique detective story with great heart and delicacy. * Observer *

Author Bio

Michael Redhill is a poet and playwright. He lives in Toronto. Martin Sloane is his first novel.