We, Jane, by Aimee Mann

We, Jane is probably not a novel I would ever have picked up or heard about if it hadn’t been one of this year’s NL Reads selections, which I think is in itself enough to justify a “competition” like NL Reads — the point is not really the competition (which is just a contest for which book/writer can round up the most votes), but to promote books by local authors that readers might not otherwise hear of.

The premise of We, Jane is inspired by the idea of the Jane Collective, transposed to a contemporary Canadian setting. Marthe is a Newfoundland woman living in Montreal, just turned thirty and feeling somewhat rootless and adrift in her life. She feels the need of a cause and a community to belong to, and having had an abortion a couple of years earlier, wonders if abortion rights and access might be a cause for her to get involved in. When she meets an older woman — we later learn her name is Ruth, though for a long time Marthe thinks of her as Jane — who dreams of going back to her rural Newfoundland roots and helping the local midwife perform abortions for desperate women who can’t access legal abortions in St. John’s, Marthe becomes caught up in “Jane’s” dream.

This novel is about a lot of things – reproductive rights, and the challenge of access to abortions in economically depressed and remote rural places even though abortion is legal in Canada, but also about community, about communities of women in particular, and about finding your place in the world. Based on reviews I’ve read online, one of the biggest deciding factors in whether you connect with this book or not will be how you feel about Marthe. She’s very much the central character and it’s about her journey, and although the narration is third-person not first-person, it’s a very close third-person so we do feel like we are getting not just her thoughts but her voice. I loved Marthe’s voice — even when I found the choices she made frustrating (as I often did), I loved her wit and observations (which are, of course, a blend of the character’s and the narrator’s observations – there were at least three sentences in this novel that were such perfect observations of Newfoundland life that I had to highlight them).

I read this book in a single insomnia-riddled night (it’s fairly short), and I think that was a good way to do it — not that I recommend insomnia, but it’s a book that rewards a single, immersive reading. I really enjoyed it. I’m not sure it’ll be enough to change my NL Reads vote (which I thought I had already decided on prior to reading this) but it certainly makes me think twice.