A Town Called Solace: ‘Will break your heart’ Graham Norton

Product Information

This is Mary Lawson’s fourth novel and I’d recommend a binge immersion. She has carved out a world in northern Ontario that’s vividly, absorbingly real; she captures tones and voices with exactitude in writing that’s idiomatic but never flashy and carries you along from midnight to dawn, oblivious of the time.”— Literary Review (UK) The development of the storyline is slow but at the same time very engaging. It’s skillfully written and it gives us 3 distinct alternating narrators. This is a character’s study of how life in a small town and the disappearance of a teenager affect 3 interconnected people. Many of them consider how people grapple with the past – whether personal experiences of grief or dislocation or the historical legacies of enslavement, apartheid and civil war. Many examine intimate relationships placed under stress, and through them meditate on ideas of freedom and obligation, or on what makes us human,” said Jasanoff. “It’s particularly resonant during the pandemic to note that all of these books have important things to say about the nature of community, from the tiny and secluded to the unmeasurable expanse of cyberspace.” The books world has long complained about the Booker’s decision to open its doors to American authors. This year, five British authors make the longlist, alongside four Americans. Ishiguro and the British-Canadian Cusk’s novels are joined by fellow Britons Francis Spufford’s Light Perpetual, which imagines a future for five children killed in the blitz, Sunjeev Sahota’s China Room, which weaves together the story of a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab with that of a young man in 1999, and British-Somali author Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men, in which suspicion falls on Mahmood Mattan for the murder of a shopkeeper in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay in 1952.

Clara, Liam, and Elizabeth’s lives, come together in love, grief and hope, as we the readers look on with a poignancy that tugs at the heart. Told from the POV of all three protagonists, it’s told beautifully! Liam Kane has been left the house by Mrs Orchard, and with his marriage all but finished, it gives him time to decide his next move. Clara doesn’t know yet that her neighbour has died, and sees Liam as an intruder, someone who has no right to try and take over Mrs Orchard’s home. Elizabeth is thinking about a crime committed thirty years ago, one that had tragic consequences for two families. She desperately wants to make amends before she dies.I discovered Mary Lawson in 2015 with Road Ends and caught up with Crow Lake in the summer of 2019. All four of her books are set in fictional locations inspired by the villages and rural areas of Northern Ontario, where the author grew up before moving to England in 1968. So Solace, while not a real town, is true to her memory and, despite the sometimes gruff or know-it-all locals, an emotional landmark for the three central characters, all of whom are processing trauma and looking for places of comfort where they can start over. While this is not my absolute favourite book by Mary Lawson, I did enjoy it very, very much. I hope I don’t have to wait as long for her next one. People talk about “comfort food”.

Mary Lawson’s fourth novel begins with a crisis: In a small Northern Ontario town in the early 1970s, rebellious 16-year-old Rose, after another screaming fight with her mother, has finally made good on her threat to run away. When, after a couple of weeks passes, police as far as Toronto still have no leads, worst-case scenarios are conjured. Solace, so far, has not lived up to its name. Completely absorbing… A Town Called Solace pleases at every level. It’s a captivating tale suffused with wisdom and compassion.”― Toronto Star

Select a format:

The story is told from three-character points of view. Clara, 7 years old, is a dutiful cat sitter who begins the story staring out her front window, watching her neighbor, Mrs. Orchard’s, home. Clara’s teenage sister Rose has just ran away, and Clara feels that she needs to keep her vigilance of the neighbor’s home to assure Rose’s safe return. It’s not just a novel about a technological future,” said judge Rowan Williams, the writer and former archbishop of Canterbury. “It is a novel about power, the nature of personality, about freedom and about love.” Over time Clara begins to realise that the situation with Elizabeth is much worse than her parents have told her – and by extension becomes increasingly emotional as she realises that the same may be true of their reassurances about Rose and so starts to lose faith in them I also enjoyed how well the author was able to evoke the atmosphere of a small town and its region (Northern Ontario).

Irish News Hoping to see Bruce Springsteen? Flying to Cardiff may prove far cheaper than going to DublinThey were childless (she having suffered many miscarriages) which leaves her with a profound sense of isolation and emptiness This is the setting for a book exploring connections between people, half buried memories, loneliness, heartbreak and peripheral characters that you come to love. Lawson even made me love the nurse that was taking care of Elizabeth in the hospital, even though she just flitted in and out occasionally. These people are real, and kudos to the author for portraying an 8 year old girl who is not exceptional in any way, but is dealing with the confusing world of adults who won't tell her the truth in an effort to protect her. Clara made me clutch my heart more than once. The longlist is completed by Canadian author Mary Lawson’s A Town Called Solace, set in Northern Ontario in 1972, when eight-year-old Clara’s sister Rose goes missing. I did want a bit more, which I suppose is better than wanting less. I wanted to hear from Liam’s mother, even if it had just been one chapter, and I wanted to know more about Rose. But those are minor complaints. The author beautifully captures small town life and the characters who inhabit the town. This is a quiet, lovely, and poignant look at lives that eventually intertwine in unexpected ways. Beautifully told, this is a deceptively simple story of flawed people (aren’t we all?) who live with regrets, and have known grief, but also joy. Solace is not just a town in Ontario, it’s what we can offer one another if we open our hearts. Highly recommended, this is a story that will touch your heart. A Town Called Solace , the brilliant and emotionally radiant new novel from Mary Lawson, her first in nearly a decade, opens on a family in crisis. Sixteen-year-old Rose is missing. Angry and rebellious, she had a row with her mother, stormed out of the house and simply disappeared. Left behind is seven-year-old Clara, Rose’s adoring little sister. Isolated by her parents’ efforts to protect her from the truth, Clara is bewildered and distraught. Her sole comfort is Moses, the cat next door, whom she is looking after for his elderly owner, Mrs. Orchard, who went into hospital weeks ago and has still not returned.

This is a beautiful book told from the points of view of three main characters, Clare, Elizabeth and Liam. Clare is just seven years old, her older sister has disappeared, her parents are grieving and the bottom has dropped out of her world. Elizabeth is Clare's neighbour and she is suffering heart failure. When she is hospitalised she asks Clare to look after her cat, Moses, and gives her a key to the house. Clare takes her responsibility very seriously so when Liam moves in next door she has no idea what to do except look after Moses and Elizabeth's possessions as best she can. I loved reading A Town Called Solace ... It's beautifully written and so finely crafted; told in the kind of prose I most admire because it takes what appears to be complicated and makes it clear... These interwoven stories of three people at different stages of life, and yet each struggling with their own form of loss and grief, will stay with me the way good friendships stay with you. It's already one of my favourite books of the year. A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson, Maggie Huculak (narrator), Tajja Isen (Narrator), Ian Lake (Narrator)

More Entertainment

The book opens in the third person voice of a introverted seven year old girl Clare, with what seems to be increasingly autistic tendencies exacerbated by the tension she is facing making her something of an outsider at school