Canadian Prairies

The title of Patrick Gale’s latest lyrical novel alludes both to its central theme of the hidden, winding paths of love and also to the street by Wakefield prison where two characters, Mike and Pip, live. They are fictional renderings of the author’s grandparents – the names and address are real. In Love Lane, just as he did in his 2015 novel A Place Called Winter, Gale draws on his own history to frame a question about a family secret and then uses fiction to create a rendering of a possible truth. He develops the story of Harry Cane, who, in the earlier novel, we discovered was a gay man, blackmailed out of a privileged life in England and banished to the Canadian Prairies at the start of the 20th century.