Consolation of Maps

'Austere, elusive . . . the influence of Beckett seems unmistakeable' Irish Times

Arresting and beautiful, The Consolation of Maps tells a story of ill-fated passion. Theodora Appel runs a company that is more like a family. When young Kenji Tanabe moves from Tokyo to Washington, he's initiated into her rarefied world of antiquarian cartography. But Theodora - brilliantly successful, beguilingly secretive - has another obsession. It is in Florence, where past clashes with present and even love has a price, that her impossible dream will threaten them all.


Austere and elusive . . . lithe, controlled narrative . . . Bourke has created a novel that, like the complex objects - at once historical yet aesthetic - from which it takes its name, repays effort and attention (Neil Hegarty Irish Times)

A delicately compelling debut . . . Bourke captures how the contours of love and loss can run deep, to devastating effect (Wiltshire Living)

This is a book that enables the reader to enter a different world . . . but through its pages also helps us to understand where great loss can take us (Gazette & Herald)

Dizzying . . . the ending is shattering in this world of grace and beauty (Geolounge)