Limen

By Susan Hawthorne

When two women and a dog set off on a holiday, they have no inkling of what’s to come. They wake to find the river has crept up silently during the night. Trapped by floodwater, they devise escape routes only to be faced with more obstacles at every turn. Only the dog remains calm. This poetic novella grips you with its language, its pace, and its anxieties. The word limen is defined as “a threshold below which a stimulus is not perceived.” In Susan’s Hawthorne’s verse novel, there is the threat of the rising waters—the women’s safety is above the threshold of perception. This definition feeds the suspense and tension of this book. However, the word also suggests a transition, a state, a threshold between earth and sky, between day and night, between water and heat, survival and drowning—and it is these paired states, together with many more that also drive narrative.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spinifex Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781742198576

Book preview

Freya

PROLOGUE

a cormorant goes fishing

silver splash

of fish in her beak

the water a still arc

buzz of dragonflies

then

silent as a snake

it’s periscope up and

periscope down

traversing

sky air water mud

kookaburras gather

for their daily laugh

on the banks of the Einasleigh

how we bare ourselves

into the sweetness

of sand mud and time

it’s birds again and yet again

our ears ringing with

possibilities of laughter

and sorrow

tongues

unforked for renewal

muscles unwound

ready for life’s next pounce

DAY 1

woman 1:

the river is a necklace of pools

it grapples its way through the land

like a badly executed parting of hair

woman 2:

three years we camp in the same place

the landscape is rearranged

Devonian rocks abrupt against sand

our inner landscapes are changed too

that first year grief-filled for our old dog

on the other side of the river

a black spirit dog arrives

sniffing the Styx

she stands

looks our