Featured Reading Guide
Michael Redhill
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…
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Michael Redhill is a poet and playwright. He lives in Toronto. Martin Sloane is his first novel.
topAbout the Book
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.
topMichael Redhill interview/review
THE INSPIRATION FOR MY FIRST NOVEL By Michael Redhill
“Martin Sloane emerged, at first, out of encountering artworks that seemed to express a great deal without words. The first drafts of the novel were attempts to create a collage of a fictional life, and they failed mainly because there was nothing that held the disparate elements of the story together at its centre. Plus, coming from a background in poetry, I didn’t yet know enough about structuring a work as complicated as a novel, and these early drafts tended to come apart any time something needed to be resolved. So other inspirations entered into the process.”
“It seemed to me that the congress between things and people is in the knowledge that human relationships are not as constant as the physical world (although we often impose our expectations of the physical world on spiritual matters), and I found a dramatic counterpoint for the novel in the metaphor of disappearance. And so the character of Martin Sloane became an absence in the novel, and the things he left behind coded the emotion of this loss for the main character. This character, Jolene Iolas, came to the fore at this stage of the writing and assumed the role of narrator as well, so most of the novel is written in her voice. These are the concrete “inspirations” for the novel. The rest of them, perhaps the more important ones, are ones I can’t really voice, except that they have to do with the danger inherent in loving other people.”
topStarting Points for Discussion
- Having realised Molly’s capacity and desire to understand Martin’s art, Jolene tries to give her the honeycomb artwork. What does Molly’s behaviour (especially in context of her experience with martin in the shed) say about the friendship between the two women?
- One morning, Martin and Jolene embark on a strange game of storytelling and lying. What significance does this have in relation to events in both their lives and their perceptions of those events?
- After coming close to death from tuberculosis, Martin is taken into a Catholic church by his father, although he knows it goes against his mother’s wishes. How far does this theme of compromise and tolerance permeate the book?
- Considering the absence of the adult Martin from the main part of the book, how successfully do you think Michael Redhill maintains his presence through the searching and discussions of the two women?
- Discuss the significance of the story of the Clonmacnoise Bible.
- Jolene’s conclusion is that you cannot ever really know someone if you love them, and that our faith in love is misplaced. Although she also says that she doesn’t know where else to place that faith. Do you think these reflections are fully justified by the events of the book?
Other Books by Michael Redhill
Consolation
It is 1856, Toronto. Unable to make a living in the New World from his trade,…
Fidelity
Michael Redhill follows his acclaimed novel Martin Sloane with a masterfully…
Suggested Further Reading
- Waterland ~ Graham Swift
- Possession ~ A S Byatt
- The Archivist ~ Martha Cooley
- The Horse’s Mouth ~ Joyce Carey
- Ulysses ~ James Joyce
- Wild Life ~ Richard Ford