Welcome to Litsy!

A thoughtful look at the subject of abortion and the relationships of women from the point-of-view of a woman in her 30's uncertain about her goals and place in life. I especially liked the Montreal and Newfoundland settings.

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https://youtu.be/iRBeRlvdlzo
A fabulous character-driven novel about a multigenerational group of Newfoundland women offering discreet, even secret abortion services and attempting to hand the tradition down. Absolutely gobsmackingly riveting.

Forgot to crosspost this yesterday. Oops. https://youtu.be/eDYsWUEMMU

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#InvisibleCities

Intro

Weekly Highlights

So the Path Does Not Die by Pede Hollist

Buddy Reads Announcement

We, Jane by Aimee Wall

The Identities of Marie Rose Delorme Smith by Doris Jeanne MacKinnon

The Christmas Tree by Jennifer Johnston

These enigmatic opening lines to the novel immediately grabbed my attention!

The great Canadian abortion novel. After her own abortion, Marthe wants to be in community with and "be obliged" to other women. She meets "Jane" and together they return to rural Newfoundland to carry on an underground tradition. But Marthe's desire to be obliged is challenged by what that means in reality. An excellent little novel.

Oh wow! Fantastic! I‘ve been waiting for a conversation about abortion that is honest and real and to find it in this novel has been great

“The thing to remember was that they were out in the middle of the Atlantic on an island on an earth simmering with heat & rage & people would have to see that they were eventually, once again, going to have to fend for themselves.” Women taking control of reproduction is one aspect of this brilliant novel, written with convincing dialogue peppered with Newfoundland expressions. It‘s mostly about women‘s relationships with each other. #LGBTQ

Jenny had arrived in NYC just in time to watch all the radical feminist groups disintegrate into power struggles & infighting but, she shrugged, all that‘s kind of inevitable. People are loath to talk about it because they don‘t want to make us all sound like petty bitches and, like, hurt the cause, but some of them were petty bitches!
👇

Oh Trish, she‘s a bit different, you know, but she‘s best kind really, and my cousin thinks the sun shines out of her ass ever since she had the baby at home. Yeah. In the living room. She‘s a bit different, but you know. It was one of Marthe‘s least favourite expressions, the way people said it here. Oh, I see, well that‘s a bit different. 👇

Back in the car, on the highway, Jane settled another paper cup of coffee into the cup holder, pulled a rumpled copy of Buddenbrooks, fat with damp, from between the seats: Read to me?
[…]
Marthe took the book from Jane‘s hand and started reading. She loved reading aloud, it was so rare that anyone wanted it.

You look back on where you came from and think why live like that. The slush, the snow in May, the forever blanket of fog. There are people who eat dinner in their backyards all year long and there you are, barely able to go out in your shirtsleeves except for a few days a year.

Don‘t get all sepia-toned on me. She would say things like that but then tell a story about some show at the LSPU Hall that had devolved into a fistfight, a full-on racket, and how that was the summer they put the clocks ahead two hours so it was light light light till late every night and everyone went a bit squirrelly, all this in a voice dripping with that sepia honey and Marthe would thrill to it quietly, getting to go to that place.

But it can be another way, Jane would say. It‘s already been another way, Jane would say. And Marthe would agree.
And just as Marthe was settling into the conversation, just as she was about to ask for actual details—what other way, exactly, did Jane mean—Jane would change the subject, or end the conversation. It was dizzying, but effective. Marthe was consumed.

Jane liked big novels, Great Works. Mann & Stendhal & the Russians & Henry James. She liked novels of ideas with the ideas woven into the world of the book, novels where vaguely weak sick people sit around the sanatorium talking about time & philosophy & art. Jane wanted, always, the transcendent. The almost over the top. She liked opera. Most anything played by Glenn Gould. She was impatient with anything less.

An important story about women, friendships, and finding your way home wherever that may be.
We, Jane is a wonderful #canlit debut! I loved that this is based around a real movement call Jane that started in 1965. The importance and power of women helping women, performing illegal abortions because there was no other access was so moving. #canlit #bookreview