LIMINAL

Winner of France’s Prix des Jeunes Libraires 2021

Longlisted for the Prix des Libraires du Québec 2020

CBC Books Best Canadian Fiction of 2018

While caring for his mother during a serious illness, Jordan opens the door to her bedroom, and as his eyes fall upon her body in bed he is overcome by a terrible instant of unknowing: Is she asleep, or is she dead? The sight of his mother's body, caught between these two possibilities, causes him to plunge headlong into the uncertain depths of consciousness itself. Unfolding entirely within that single moment, Liminal is a portrait of a young man’s reckoning with the ever-elusive nature of self, a generation caught in suspended animation, and a son’s enduring love for his mother.

“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. 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; it speaks in the code and cadences of the late 2010s and paints an incisive portrait of the demographic we call millennials. . . A real jaw-dropping intellectual feat.”

— Globe and Mail (full review)

★★★★ 1/2 | Jordan Tannahill's first novel is a prodigious odyssey that tests the limits of reason and materiality

— Le Devoir (full review)

“Tannahill is 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

“Fascinating novel, brilliant and intelligent text that takes your breath away […] A text that will make its mark, I am convinced of it.”

— Littérature du Québec

“Liminal moves at a breakneck pace, combining science, philosophy, spirituality, and pop culture . . . Readers may never think about living or dying the same way again.”

— This Magazine

“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

Published in English Canada by House of Anansi (2018)

Published in French by La Peuplade (2020), in translation by Melissa Verreault