Writing on the Borderline: Nathan Filer (The Shock of the Fall) and Marjorie Celona (Y)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce two debut novels—namely The Shock of the Fall by British stand-up poet Nathan Filer and Y by Canadian writer Marjorie Celona—which are particularly compelling, both in terms of storyline and storytelling. Both novels address the overwhelming issue of teenage angst and trauma, through the eyes of their protagonists and in their own voices. Matthew and Shannon need to come to terms with either a tragic event, or a troubled childhood: the former is haunted by his brother's death and confined to a mental hospital; the latter has experienced abuse while in foster care. Like the main characters living on the edge, both novels are borderline fictions that hardly fit in with the current trends in British and Canadian fiction. This paper will examine the ways in which these two novels revisit, in a more or less experimental way, postmodern madness in the first case and the orphan narrative in the second.

Keywords

• British fiction
• Canadian fiction
• debut novel
• genealogy
• mental illness
• orphanhood