One Book

I'm writing from the far side of exhaustion on my last night in Toronto, but while I still have a soupçon of wakefulness in me, I want to put down a few notes. I'll post more observations about the week and the events I participated in when I get back home.

The most pressing observation to make, however, is what a unique experience it was to meet, at last, Consolation's readers, the ones the book was intended for. If you attended any of the events in Toronto, you might have heard me say that the novel, when it was first published, fell on deaf ears. That was a difficult experience, because if the ones you're talking to don't hear you (or are not aware you're actually speaking to them, which is a better image, since Consolation, when it was published suffered from, shall we say, a low profile), it makes you wonder if it was worth speaking in the first place.

This week in Toronto, with One Book, I finally felt that the book had reached its intended audience, and it was immensely gratifying to meet Torontonians who were reading this book and taking away from it a sense that there was something underneath and behind the cityscape they live in. If Consolation provokes Torontonians to look deeper at this place, if it causes their gaze to linger longer, then I'll feel the book has burst its covers and gone out in the world to live in its readers. There's nothing else a writer could ask for.

I'll try, in the coming couple of weeks, to give a fuller report on what a week home in the snow among book-lovers was like, but for now I just want to thank everyone for coming out (sometimes in truly awful weather) and especially everyone at the Toronto Public Library. Chief among whom I thank Tina Srebotnjak, who was in at least three places at once at all times this week. I know this, because she was with me almost all the time.

Until I can post again, be sure to check out the Toronto Public Library's Book Buzz page. You can post your impressions of Keep Toronto Reading, or of Consolation, and you can also post your questions there. I'll be checking in semi-regularly to answer them.

But for now, thank you all, and good night.