Reviews of The Jane Loop
About The Jane Loop | Interview with Graham | Read an Excerpt | How to Buy
The Jane Loop Graham Jackson Cormorant Books, 400 pages, $22
Emily Bitto’s The Strays, Graham Jackson’s The Jane Loop and Simon Roy’s Kubrick Red, reviewed
JADE COLBERT Special to The Globe and Mail Published Friday, Jan. 27, 2017 10:58AM EST Last updated Friday, Jan. 27, 2017 10:58AM ESTUntil the construction of Toronto’s second subway line in the late 1960s, the western terminus of the Bloor streetcar at Jane Street marked a psychological border. To the east, the streetcar, the bright lights and hubbub of downtown. To the west, the bus through sleepy suburbs, an escape from the city’s perceived seaminess. Passengers transferred between bus and streetcar at the Jane Loop, a locus of personal significance for 16-year-old Neil in Graham Jackson’s debut novel. The Jane Loop describes Neil’s dawning attraction to men and sexual awakening during the summer of 1962. At a time when homosexuality was still criminalized in Canada, Neil’s is not a coming-out narrative of escape – he still has two years of high school. Instead, Jackson, who studies male-on-male intimacy from a Jungian perspective, explores the historical sexual geography of Toronto’s inner suburbs, finding deep wells of meaning beneath the veneer of hetero contentment. An unabashedly erotic coming-of-age story bringing an era often written off as staid to vibrant sexual life.