Patrick Gale has long been one of the most reliably captivating, sympathetic storytellers, often weaving in his own experiences into his novels: he lives on a beef in farm at the rugged far west of Cornwall, a county that features regularly, and his grandfather and father were prison governors-Love Lane is the name of the street on which stands Wakefield prison in West Yorkshire.
The central character in this latest novel, Harry Cane, is Mr Gale’s great-grandfather, who mysteriously left England in disgrace at the turn of the 20th century to forge a bleak existence as one of the first colonisers of the Canadian prairies. This part of his story is told in the 2015 novel A Place Called Winter.
Love Lane is set in 1952, when Harry, who has been forced to sell his homestead, receives a invitation to visit from his daughter, Betty, whom he last saw as a baby and who is now married to a prison governor (as she was in real life). As Harry disembarks in Liver-pool, however, his family is disconcerted by this shabby, toothless old man, who is a far cry from the handsome, affluent figure of their last photographs and Betty realises that she may not be able to look after him as she had envi-saged. The sadness, at times heart-stopping, is, however, redeemed by Harry’s ability for empathy, especially with his troubled grand-daughters. As ever, Mr Gale’s sense of time, place and human frailty is impeccable and scorchingly humane.
Kate Green 1.4.26
