Jacks: A Gothic Gospel

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

On the back cover of this first novel by the Montreal poet and writer
Ann Stone are two repeated phrases: “She’s bitten off more than she
could chew” and “her eyes are bigger than her stomach.” Stone
describes Jacks as a “gothic gospel,” a term as mysterious as most
of what goes on in the book. The sexual references strewn throughout
lead one to suspect that the author is processing some distressing
childhood incidents, and that her readers are unwittingly part of group
therapy. The “jacks” characters move in and out of the action in a
variety of guises: lazyjack, redjack, Hoodoo jack. The object of their
collective attention is a young woman named Hermeline. Hermeline is
working her way through a swampy world Stone terms the Bosque Perdue, a
dark and knotty place that can serve as objective correlative for this
curious little book.