Limbo

Linda M. Bayley is a freelance writer based in Sudbury, Ontario. She is
the author of Estrangement: Poems.

In Limbo, Jacqueline Honnet takes the reader on a series of unhurried,
comfortable journeys between the Bahamas and Canada, between past and
present. Most of the stories are subtly linked, featuring moments in the
life of Maddie, a young woman who spent her childhood in the Bahamas and
still goes back for regular visits. Although Maddie is only named
outright in two or three of the stories, there are enough consistencies
in chronology, geography, and family traits to give the reader a sense
of continuity, of recurring glimpses into a single life.

The book makes a satisfying circle. It begins with “Funeral
Stories,” in which a husband and wife, presumably Maddie and her
husband Will, trade stories about the funerals they have been to, all
the while trying to face their own mortality. In “Picture This,” the
last story, they travel to the Bahamas for her grandmother’s funeral.
Along the way, there is often the question of expectation, of
obligation: in “The Pepper Smuggler,” for example, Maddie begins to
see her own marriage through the lens of her friend Vinita’s arranged
marriage to an Indian software designer. Trapped in a Texas suburb,
married to a stranger, unable to work because she doesn’t have the
proper visa, Vinita develops a mysterious rash and reaches out to Maddie
over the Internet for help. Watching Maddie trying to help her friend
while managing her own marriage, the reader begins to wonder, what makes
a good wife? What makes a good marriage?

Honnet’s prose is clear and graceful, full of thought and
observation. Time spent reading Limbo is time well spent.