No traveller returns: the liminal world as ordeal and quest in contemporary young adult afterlife fiction

Abstract

In recent years, fiction specifically set in or about the afterlife has become a popular, critically acclaimed subgenre within contemporary fiction for young adults. One of the distinguishing aspects of young adult afterlife fiction is its detailed portrayal of an alien afterworld in which characters find themselves. Whilst reminiscent of the world-building of high or quest fantasy, afterworlds in young adult afterlife fiction have a distinctively different quality, and that is an emphasis on liminality. Afterlife landscapes exhibit many strange, treacherous qualities. They are never quite what they seem, and this sense of a continually shifting multiplicity is part of the destabilisation experienced by the characters in the liminal world of the afterlife. Inspired by traditional but diverse images of afterlife, afterworld settings also incorporate aspects of dream-space as well as of the real, material world left behind by the characters. The uncanny world of the dead is not just background in these novels, but crucial to the development of narrative and character. In this paper, it is argued that the concept of liminal place is at the core of the central ordeal and quest of characters in young adult afterlife fiction. It explores how authors have constructed the individual settings of their fictional afterworlds and examines the significance of the liminal nature of the afterworlds depicted in young adult afterlife fiction.