Liminal

A novel of pilgrimage and disappearances, set among marble Greek ruins and a crumbling Welsh estate. The themes are memory and thresholds of opportunity; liminal portals to another world, and a different life.

Review :
The dominant theme of Chris Keil's novel is obviously liminality. The front cover follows up the title with what seems to be a dictionary definition of the title: adj. 1. Of or relating to a sensory threshold. 2. A psychic transition experienced in magic, shamanism or rites of passage. The word 'liminality' is also the title of the second of the three sections into which the novel is divided. They are Separation, Liminality and 'Return', the three stages experienced by a person undergoing such a transition: leaving one's habitual haunts; finding oneself in a strange place that offers new, transcendent possibilities leading one to embark on a new life; finally a return home after long years as a changed and presumably fulfilled person. The central character in the novel, Geraint, a county archaeologist, believes in liminality, seeing the process unfolding in the lives of the people around him, past and present. He is the one character into whose mind Keil permits us to penetrate throughout the novel, but he is not the narrator: that function is exercised by the writer. Keil allows himself access to the thoughts and feelings of Geraint, sees everything and everybody through his eyes alone, but remains firmly on third-person terms with him. Keil knows of course that the reader will make judgements, draw conclusions, of his own, and, being a thoroughly professional storyteller, expects him to do so. But all information arrives through Geraint the filter who is also Geraint the believer. That is what keeps the reader interested and guessing. Geraint weighs up the sparse evidence about Brygga, the Celtic saint from the Dark Ages, and conjures up from it a life-changing trip by her to Liminidhi, now a seaside tourist resort in Greece, and a final return to retirement in the Land of her Fathers. The same process in Geraint's mind accounts for the lives of others in his world: Rosie, for instance, an elderly lady forever making seemingly pointless journeys. But above all for his 23-year-old son, Aled, who departs from his job in a local travel bureau on the eve of his wedding, ostensibly on office business, turns up in Liminidhi, and disappears. Which leads to Geraints departure for the same destination (but not destiny) with Aled's fiance Angela, and Aled's mother, Elaine. We may be intrigued by Geraint's beliefs, even willing to go along with them for a large part of the novel, but finally we must be disabused, as Geraint never is. There are no 'psychic thresholds', no 'rites of passage'. People's lives do change, but without blinding revelations, religious conversions, or 'sensory thresholds'. There are always mundane explanations, even if Geraint will not see them. I don't know how satisfied with my conclusions Keil would be, but he can certainly carry us along and exercise our minds at the same time. And he also parades before us a fetching variety of entertaining characters, Welsh and Greek. John Trethewy It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council. Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.