Love Lane (2026)

Patrick’s latest novel draws its title from the first address of his parents’ long and unusual marriage – a street dominated by Wakefield’s prison, in which his father was head tutor at a training school for prison officers –  but it’s also more generally a story of married love, romantic compromise and how sometimes secrets and an ability to keep one’s counsel might be key to a relationship’s enduring. It portrays not only his parents’ then very new marriage and his grandparents’ perhaps more romantic one, but revisits the secret marriage imagined, in his bestseller A Place Called Winter, between his great grandfather, Harry Cane, and his husky neighbour, Paul Slaymaker.

Many of Patrick’s novels start with a real life question to which only fiction can provide an answer: a satisfactory way of cutting through the wilful obscurities and fibs of family life. Love Lane is no exception. In 1952, Harry Cane sold up the Saskatchewan farm he had carved from the prairie singlehanded and where he had grown old, in order to return to England and visit the daughter he hadn’t seen since leaving her as a toddler. Over several weeks he stayed with her in the notorious prison at Liverpool, which his son-in-law governed, and with Patrick’s mother and father in Wakefield but then, for reasons unknown, money was clawed together to send him back to Canada rather than keep him in the bosom of the family. What had he done to deserve this treatment?

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Here are some advance reactions from other writers:

‘Love Lane is the story of a family, told beautifully and with deep understanding.  There is no judgement here, only humanity.  A joy and a lesson for our time.’ Ann Cleeve

‘With Love Lane, Gale gets right to the secret joys and hidden heartbreaks of ordinary, flawed family life. A tender, delicately devastating novel.’ Sarah Waters

‘Nobody is better than Patrick Gale at discovering the extraordinary stories that are hidden in the cracks of ordinary lives, and Love Lane is his finest novel yet: a family history that is full of yearning and as tender as a mother’s embrace.’ Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

‘Miraculous, mischievous and quietly devastating, Love Lane is the irresistible story of five individuals, linked by the past and yet separated by the present.  I have just fallen in love with a book. ‘ Rachel Joyce

‘Love Lane moved me greatly. The novel has a great sweep, in its story, and in the richness and vividness of each of its character. This is a book about secrets and lies, yet Gale has such an exact and elegant power as a storyteller that the experience of reading the novel is rousing.  I think it wonderful.’ Christos Tsiolkas

‘Patrick Gale brings his usual compassionate sympathy, impeccable research and elegant style to his powerful new novel. It was a joy to be reunited with Harry Cane, the pioneering farmer from A Place Called Winter, as he returns from Canada to his not entirely hospitable homeland in his old age, and reconnects with three generations of his family. Love Lane is an involving story of reconciliation, secrets and compromises, rich in emotional truth and evocative historical detail.’  Clare Chambers

‘Pure reading pleasure.’ Charlotte Hobson

‘It really is an extraordinary creation, one of the most atmospheric and subtly realised novels I’ve read in a long while. It has the feel of a small-scale epic, filtered through distinct voices, about family and memory, estrangement and homecoming – all suffused in the ambiences of the mid-twentieth century. The shifting perspectives, the small resonant details of time and place, the sharp observations of family life – all these give the novel an emotional force that steals up on you. One aspect I loved was the alternation between lives observed at an everyday level and the evocation of longer, generational time. Among other things, the novel is a masterly examination of time and the fading of regret into resignation – how one learns to live with whatever blows the past has dealt; how time itself allows this. Harry struck me as the clearest embodiment of the theme – a man very nearly destroyed by life, and yet powerfully and defiantly alive in the final pages. Incidentally, I loved the sharpness of the closing sentence. It sums up so much about his character.’ James Cahill

‘Love Lane is an intimate and closely-observed novel — a family drama full of heart-rending moments illumined by the power of suppressed desire. The characters feel real, knowable and alive. Full of rich detail, this story brings private pasts to light with all of Gale’s signature warmth, grace and humanity. ‘ Seán Hewitt

‘He brings a musicality and rootedness to his prose along with a seemingly effortless skill of narrative that makes the work both compelling and rich. Crucially, he reminds us that while social mores and even laws may change, bigotry and brutality often lurk just beneath a polite surface. This is both a tale beautifully told.’ Stella Duffy

‘It seems at first like a gentle novel. Slow, thoughtful, layering feeling on feeling, so the reader is suddenly so involved in the characters… As you read on, gentleness grows into emotional truth and powerful feeling…I found it almost unbearably moving. There is so much reflection on aging, home and where one belongs. So much grace, humour and wisdom in Harry. There is so much joy in every character you meet, however briefly.  Patrick Gale doesn’t show off, his prose is clean and clear and true. He makes you care about the characters who feel real, and you so badly want the world to treat them with the respect, kindness and attention they deserve. A deep, moving novel, which is somehow hopeful, despite the sadness.’ Georgina Moore

‘Five threads of storytelling interweave to form the braid of a novel both poignant and elegiac. A story of missed opportunities and, ultimately, a memorable story of forgiveness.’ Sarah Winman

‘In Love Lane, Patrick Gale has once again shown us the cracks in the human heart and the bravery of living. The return to Harry Cane in his later years is a sharp, moving glimpse into a beloved character aging. Harry’s own return to an unknown family with their battles and secrets is transformative and unsentimental. Patrick Gale holds decades in paragraphs, years in a sentence, and with perfect economy and discretion allows us to feel how generations face or hide from their foes. This is a beautiful and chiselled novel: prepare to cross the ocean and weep.’ Tiffany Murray

‘This is a captivating novel from beginning to end.  Beautifully paced, it combines characters that spring immediately to bouncing life, a capacious and compassionate humanity and vividly convincing historical insight.  With delicate strands of family story wound expertly into a profoundly involving narrative of passion lost and found, Love Lane traces all the strange and wonderful ways of the heart.’ Christobel Kent

Publisher: Tinder Press
ISBN: 978-1472257468

Buy Love Lane

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