Liminal by Chris Keil
Aled is used to his dad Geraint waxing lyrical about some saint's clifftop lookout; some Greek temple or another hosting a thousand sacred prostitutes; some village near Corinth. Geraint is the county archaeologist, after all. So when travel agent Aled takes a recce trip to that same Peloponnese village, his father is surprised. When Aled fails to return on the eve of his marriage, Geraint becomes alarmed and sets out on his trail.
This quest, which is also a pilgrimage, will change all those involved. Relationships – father and youthful son; son and elderly mother; fiances, lovers; colleagues - none are
immutable. This novel shows those thresholds of choice, those liminal moments and places where a door may open onto another world, or at the very least, another way of
relating to the one we have.
Look inside: Preface and Chapter 1 (PDF)
Talking to: Chris Keil
Alcemi: What does “liminal” mean for you in your novel?Chris: The sense that life isn't really being lived unless it's a series oftransformations
or revelations. Some ecstatic: journeys, awakenings, flashes of insight, falling in love.
Some painful: loss, bereavement, the ambiguities of memory, being dumped.
For Geraint, the mysterious Saint Brygga represents life as constant choice.
A: What drew you to Greece as one of the book's settings?
C: I was drawn to Greece for the same reasons that my characters were drawn in by it. The intensity of the surfaces there, the heat, the light and shade, the sensuality of all the textures of life. Also I love the sense of what lies just below these: the past, the possible, the transcendental!
A: You are interested in collective memory. In what ways does this come through in Liminal?
C: Ah, well… Collective memory is what enables us to engage imaginatively with the distant past. I think our sense of time comes from places which seem transparent, where the past can be sensed through the surface of the present. Memory even seems to free itself from experience. Certainly, this is what some of the characters in the book are trying to do. Of course, I also know that collective memory is a social construction, which can be put to all sorts of dubious political purposes, so maybe
it constrains as much as it sets free.
Favourite film? Jean-Luc Godard: Pierrot Le Fou
Favourite historical era? Late Middle Ages, Early Renaissance; in Italy, of course.
Favourite treasure? An amulet of Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing.
Chris Keil has worked as a sheep-farmer, a journalist and a teacher of English as a foreign language in a number of European countries. Recently returning to academic life and now lecturing worldwide, he has published on dissonant heritage and traumatic memory at Auschwitz. He lives in west Wales. Liminal is his second novel.
Praise for Liminal
"Evocative... Chris Keil's writing, which is limpid and often arrestingly vivid, has a charged quality that conveys the mysteries pulsing behind the everyday surfaces of things." Nicholas Clee, The Guardian
"Luminous yet unpretentious prose that leaves images lingering in the mind... an enchanting novel that continues to reveal its secrets long after you have put it down.”Suzy Adams, New Welsh Review
More Liminal Reviews
Americymru Interview Chris Keil
Rights enquiries: Worldwide rights for this book are available. Contact Marinella Magri / www.ilcaduceo.it
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Events with Chris Keil