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Christian Dittus
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English

LIMINAL

Jordan Tannahill

From award-winning playwright and filmmaker Jordan Tannahill comes a masterful and moving novel in the tradition of Ben Lerner's Leaving the Atocha Station and Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be.

At 11:04 a.m. on January 21, 2017, Jordan opens the door to his mother's bedroom. As his eyes adjust to the half-light, he finds her lying in bed, eyes closed and mouth agape. In that instant, he cannot tell whether she is asleep or dead. The sight of his mother's body, caught between these two possibilities, causes Jordan to plunge headlong into the uncertain depths of consciousness itself.

From androids to cannibals to sex clubs, an unforgettable personal odyssey emerges, populated by a cast of sublime outsiders in search for the ever-elusive nature of self. Part ontological thriller, part millennial saga, Liminal is a riotous and moving portrait of a young man in volatile times, a generation caught in suspended animation, and a son's enduring love for his mother.

JORDAN TANNAHILL is an award-winning author, playwright, filmmaker, and theatre director. He is the winner of the Governor General's Award for Drama for Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays and was shortlisted for the prize again for Concord Floral. He has twice received Dora Awards for Outstanding New Play. His play Botticelli in the Fire won the 2017 Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best New Play and is currently being adapted into a feature by filmmaker Stephen Dunn. In addition, Draw Me Close (Jordan Tannahill/NFB/National Theatre of Great Britain) was selected for the Venice International Film Festival's first-ever competition for virtual reality. From 2012 to 2016, in collaboration with William Ellis, Tannahill ran the alternative art space Videofag, which became an influential hub for queer and avant-garde work in Canada. Liminal is his first novel and is being made into a feature length art film by the NFB and the National Theatre in the UK. Born in 1988 in Ottawa, Ontario, he now makes his home in London, U.K.
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Published 2018-01-01 by House of Anansi Press

Comments

Liminal is generous, bold, unabashedly emotional, and really smart ... an ultra-engaging portrait of the artist, and portal to the art. -- Ann-Marie Macdonald, author of The Way the Crow Flies A raw love letter to a mother, and a blazing meditation on love, death, and dying, Jordan Tannahill's Liminal is a full-fledged unleashing from a major literary talent. -- Anosh Irani, author of The Parcel This book has everything: a road trip, coming of age, philosophy, mythology, meditation on the nature of self, and the tender love of a son for his mother - all infused with uncommon emotional intelligence. -- Teva Harrison, author of In-Between Days

Tannahill is a good writer, a natural storyteller with a strong sense of narrative rhythm as well as the ability to launch into almost mystical flights of poetic vision. -- Toronto Star

French: La Peuplade;

LIMINAL is being made into a feature length art film by the National Theatre in the UK and the National Film Board of Canada!

[...]The poster child of a new generation for whom ‘interdisciplinary' is not a buzzword but a way of life. -- Kelly Nestruck

Destabilizing from its opening pages, Liminal by Jordan Tannahill places readers firmly between life and death, fact and fiction, consciousness and unconsciousness. [...] Liminal moves at a breakneck pace... Readers may never think about living or dying the same way again. -- This Magazine

[...] He's a rare human type described by Marshall McLuhan: a zeitgeist savant who can read his era, internalize his moment's changes in technology and ideological mood, and adapt in real time. --- Daniel Karasik

Authors such as Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk, and Karl Ove Knausgaard, among others, are showing their exhaustion with plot, opting to be candid, probing, philosophical, and discursive at a micro-level on the page. Toronto playwright Jordan Tannahill's lushly intelligent debut novel, Liminal, is an exciting addition to this school . . . Liminal captures something illuminating and undefinable about the present moment . . . A real jaw-dropping intellectual feat . . . A rich and unusual story. -- Globe and Mail