Crossing Limbo discussion

Review: by Christopher Rezel

Crossing Limbo, by Shane Joseph
A book of short stories


BY CHANCE an older man, a former writer with debilitating cancer, and a troubled young woman run into each other at night beside a rail track. The chance encounter helps both to put aside ominous plans and gives them new hope.
A former German soldier from WWII and a Jewish concentration-camp survivor come together in an aged care facility. They have moments of forgetfulness and may suffer Alzheimer’s. The disorders frequently compel them to relapse into the horrors of past lives.
“Waiting For the Train” and “Mists of Memory” are the first two stories in Crossing Limbo, a book of 13 short stories by Shane Joseph.
The plots may sound complex. But in the first story, readers are skillfully taken into the circumstances and minds of two individuals who have endured much and arrived at a questionable solution. In the next, readers get a brief grasp of war and its suffering when today fuses easily into yesterday before returning again into the familiar present.
Reading the two stories calls for a certain toughness. You must accept that the human conditions under discussion may at some time afflict you, if in fact you have not already experienced some of the disturbing aspects. After all, at one time or another, must we too not look forward to reaching the end of our tether? And yes, isn’t there the possibility of finding our aged selves frustratingly forgetful or relapsing into the joys or horrors of a past?
Despite the unsettling themes of the two leading stories, others in this collection can be uplifting and give hope. And much like the cinema screen, they all draw realistic pictures into how things were or can be, in the process informing, enlightening, and entertaining the reader.
To jump to another extreme, the author doesn’t hold back when writing on sex. In fact, his inhibitions fall off as easily as the clothes of his characters. Two stories in particular come to mind: “Swingers” and “The Long Road Back.” In the first, a young man and woman try to save their moribund seven-year marriage by going to the Caribbean on a holiday for swingers. In the next, a woman takes on what must undoubtedly be the pleasurable role of coaching men in tantric sex. But there is more to the stories than mere sex, even though you will indeed find sex.
The author can be daring too, as in “Shock and Awe.” Here he easily slips into the character of a dog, yes, a clever dog, to narrate a plausible story. Or in “The Supreme Leader’s Big Day” he can conjure up the land of Kanjipoor and guide the reader through palace corridors and the extravagances of petty potentates with untold riches and a plurality of wives and mistresses. Such lives of course come with the stress of conspiracy, rebellion, and uncertainty, lives the author would be acquainted with having had South Asian beginnings himself, in addition to living and working in Arabian Gulf countries.
Notes at the end of the book inform that author Shane Joseph was born in Sri Lanka and has lived and worked in a number of countries, fitting into different roles that would have called for an agile mind and exceptional adaptability.
He has also had the fortune of travelling extensively, on and off the beaten track, opening up to new experiences and opportunities, bringing what must undoubtedly be an incisive mind and keen observation to bear on people and places, filtering out the mundane and storing the exotic.
He has let his imagination play on those experiences to produce compelling fiction and give birth to four novels and three collections of short stories. This reviewer has read the novels and many of the short stories and found Shane Joseph a master at cleverly combining character, setting, conflict, plot and theme into a harmonious final product, the outcome as agreeable as a piece of music, an activity the author says he devotes time to, amid a range of other activities.
The author is at ease writing in 1st, 2nd and 3rd person, dealing with past and present, writing about Incas and smart phones, Twitter and YouTube. His Toronto characters can work in a variety of jobs, up and down the corporate ladder; he describes their occupations with sure authority. Or they may be caught up in existential angst, battling jobs, bureaucracy, relationships, exceptional challenges, wrestling with life itself.
When contemporary life is projected on the page, disquiet is on the cards. For the author meanders through the abuse of government systems, migrants, refugees, social changes and the discomfort of older residents who view newer arrivals as a threat to their settled life and privileges.
The stories in Crossing Limbo are easy reads and range far and wide, traversing exceptional geographical landscapes and rough terrains of the mind. Readers should be forewarned though to endings that do not deliver what was eagerly foreseen and awaited.


(Christopher Rezel is a Sri Lankan journalist and writer living in Darwin, Australia.)