Marthe grew up in Newfoundland and like many young people do, she moved to Montreal to pursue a different type of life. After terminating a pregnancy and followed by a year of living with and loving her boyfriend, she is left alone when he leaves. She is lost and figuratively wandering when she decides to investigate how she may be able to support other women seeking abortion. She attends an info class for prospective doulas where she meets a woman who to her becomes “Jane”. Jane tells Marthe of a woman back home in their shared homeland of Newfoundland who performs abortions privately in her own home, reflective of the 1960’s Chicago movement named Jane. Women supporting women, spreading the importance of the essential nature of abortions and the skill with which to perform and support them. Marthe and Jane travel back to Newfoundland together with the aim to help restart the movement, though sometimes just because one is motivated to move something forward, not everyone else is as well.
I really enjoyed We, Jane but it was also not at all what I was expecting it to be. I was expecting, and hoping for, a little bit more information or background on the Jane movement or perhaps I was hoping for a bit more of that “rah rah feminism” movement forward as they restarted the movement. That’s not how the plot of this novel necessarily happens though, and that’s okay! I found We, Jane to be more about an internal, reflective movement within Marthe herself. The Jane movement acts as a backdrop or a focal point for Marthe to do some of her own internal work.
I found the relationship between Marthe and the woman she refers to as Jane interesting. Marthe also recognizes this as she does describe herself being almost obsessive of her and the idealistic vision of restarting the Jane movement. Marthe herself describes it as the want to be obligated by something. I believe she latched onto it as a purpose and became infatuated with the idea of it all. Somewhere within the story she starts to realize others have their own timelines, purposes, reasons, etc for being in the same position as her and that forces her to grow and recognize where she and this movement may fit in the world in a more realistic sense.
Something else that struck me about this novel was the writing style. While the content, events, subject matter, and most of the rest of the novel is much different, I found the writing style to be very similar to Megan Gail Coles Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club. This is interesting of course because the landscapes and setting of both novels are very close geographically. The type of storytelling with its third-person omniscient narration is descriptive but only to a limit, jumping back and forth quickly and easy between past memories or events then back to the present. No words are unnecessary and every one is chosen carefully.
While I had to adjust my expectations of We, Jane as I got through to where I expected the revolution would begin in a large forceful way and realized that wouldn’t happen, I appreciated Marthe’s AND the movement’s quiet revolution. This was an introspective novel that made me think about the essential nature of abortion, the essential nature of women being crucial supports for other women, and also about how we as humans can latch onto an idea so strongly that we lose sight a little bit of ourselves and how the idea hits into our lives and how our lives fit into an idea.
*Review first published by Cloud Lake Literary on October 20, 2021*
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