Martin Sloane: A Novel [Hardcover]

When Martin Sloane, Toronto poet and playwright Michael Redhill's first novel, appeared in Canada, it made headlines for its decade-long gestation through 12 complete drafts. In an age when many blockbuster novels read as though they never saw an editor's pencil, Redhill's stamina and ruthless self-appraisal were enough to make him newsworthy. But all that attention to its composition raises a basic question about the book itself: was Martin Sloane worth all the effort? As it turns out, Redhill's debut is an intense, poetic evocation of the experience of time and place and the personality of a fictional Irish-Canadian collage artist, Martin Sloane, whose work, if not his life, resembles the nostalgic boxes built by the real-life artist Joseph Cornell. Told in the voice of his abandoned lover Jolene Iolas, the story explores the connection between Sloane's life and his art. Iolas, who had a relationship with the older Sloane in her youth, ends up following the cold trail of his life back to Dublin, where he lived as a boy before he was exiled by illness and first began to pack up his life in little boxes. Redhill has created a powerful meditation on life and memory, his work as a poet standing him in good stead. Even if some of the characters are not quite fully realised and the narrative transitions are at times a little rough, Martin Sloane proves that hard work pays off. Long live revision.--Robyn Gillam

'… accomplished, considered, polished, it is a novel of depths and many aspects... '

‘A deeply moving first novel... profound and full of affection. It is a book of constant surprises.’

‘Mild and beautiful on the surface, Martin Sloane has explosives buried quietly in its emotional landscape…’

'A first novel with a rich centre... not a word to spare or an image too many.

'Remarkably assured... powerful... ferociously intelligent.'

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.

A stunning first novel, a huge critical success and a bestseller in Canada, which explores the power of memory, love and art.

Jolene Iolas, a student in upstate New York, encounters Martin Sloane's work while visiting a Toronto gallery. Flush with the confidence of youth, 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 face, no chain of cause and effect to be followed. Ten years pass, and Jolene learns to stop trying to make sense of what has happened to her. But before she can fully return to life, the opportunity to confront her ghost arises. Word comes that someone named Sloane has been exhibiting artworks identical to Martin's in Irish galleries.

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.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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

It was a lie that brought Martin Sloane to a picture house on O'Connell Street one night in the fall of 1936. (This was how I began, finding my way into his story, trying its doors.) He was eight, and it was the first time he'd gone anywhere by himself. It was a twenty-minute walk from his house and by the time he reached O'Connell, night had fallen and the wide boulevards were blazing with electric light. The hotel-lined street was busy with horse-taxis, news-hawks, chestnut carts; its café storefronts full of customers. Martin imagined that back at home the windows of his house were glowing with safe nighttime light.
He walked toward the cinema, the heavy coins in his pockets enough for the movie and a bag of steamed nuts. No one noticed him: although only a child, he was simply a part of what he walked through. A city dweller. Head up, cap clenched in one hand, he went down the middle of the thoroughfare, on the grassy strip that separated the two avenues. At that moment he thought his happiness complete, thought that it must have been like the happiness of being older, the way he imagined anyone might have felt, walking to the Grand Central Cinema at six o' clock at night to see the early show of The Informer.
In this he was in league with his father, who the previous week had walked over the river, in the middle of the workday, to see the picture. He'd come home red-faced with excitement.
You Irish with your bogeymen, Martin's mother had said.
They must see it, said his father.
Not these children, Colin. She is too impressionable, and he is too young.
The papers had argued back and forth over the film's merits, some saying it was scandalous and a temptation, others that it told a sore truth. It was the story of an Irishman, the drunkard Gypo Nolan, who'd sold out his friends to the British. Now it was as if the Mail and the Herald were arguing in the Sloane kitchen over dinner and it soon became a forbidden topic of conversation. But his father had certain conversational gifts. He convinced Martin's mother that her objections were about picture houses in general.
No Colin, she said, it is about this film.
You mean to say, said his father, that you don't object in principle to the viewing of motion pictures?
If they are wholesome, then no.
I don't believe it Martin's father said, staring at her in disbelief. I thought for certain you were against the pictures in general.
Not at all said Martin's mother, happy for common ground. Send him to see O'Shaughnessy's Boy, down at the Grand Central. It has that nice Mr. Beery in it.
And so, the following Sunday night, Martin's father gave him directions to the Grand Central Cinema, at the bottom of O'Connell by the river, and there, Martin paid his half-shilling. And, following his father's instructions, he went into the parlour beside the one showing O'Shaughnessy's Boy where people were gathering for the six-o'clock showing of The Informer.
When the lights went down, rain began to fall in the street. Martin sat in the darkness, the voices of the actors intermingled with the quiet pattering hiss outside the thin cinema walls, and he was transported by it all, by his illicit visit to the movie hall, by the sensuality of Gypo Nolan's drunken sin. The movie ended in heartbreak, the big man trying to outrun his fate, and when Martin went outside, the city had been transformed into mirrors of light. In the Liffey, the centre of town shone upside down in a cold radiance. He could see the buildings in the slickened car windows, on the street, against glistening rainjackets passing along the sidewalks, as if the whole place had sunk under the sea.
Martin's father was waiting in the car with the motor running in front of the cinema. He waved through his window, swiping it with his forearm so he could see out. In the car, his father handed him a towel. So? He asked.
It was good, Martin said.
His father pulled out into the slow-moving traffic. The horses drove down through the streets with their heads lowered.
Were you frightened?
No. But I think we shouldn't have lied.
I suppose we could leave the country now, said his father, and he laughed to himself. This was one of the things Martin did not understand about adults, this laugh he sometimes heard. Let's not call it a lie, though, his father said. Let's call it a secret.
Now they were driving up Berkeley Street. His father's favourite sweet shop was here, and as they drove past it they could see the windows were fogged and there were people inside. We could both use a cup of chocolate, his father said. To warm up.
Donnellan's was popular with everyone, and Martin's father kept his eyes averted from the other customers. He ordered two mugs of chocolate and a fruit bun for them to share, and when he came away from the register, a table was open in the window. They sat, and his father asked Martin to tell him the whole story of the film.
But you've seen it, Martin said. You already know how it goes.
I have seen it, said his father. But I want you to tell me, the way you remember it.