Author
Chris Keil
Chris Keil has worked as a sheep-farmer, as a journalist, and as a tour guide in a number of European cities.
Contemporary Fiction
Flirting at the Funeral
A story about love, money, and lost opportunities, ranging across Europe against a background of financial crisis, terrorism and the power of the super-rich.
At the pool-side, the evening breeze is fragrant with the scent of grilled lobster and designer sun-block. Two German girls in starched white uniforms, buttoned up as tight as barbie dolls, are serving champagne to the guests. Dave Leaper sips his drink and dreams of death and vengeance.
At a clinic in Southern Europe a group of young film-makers are recreating the songs, the slogans and the idealism of the years of revolution, while an old man, mummified by wealth and power, watches them and pays the bills. He pays and pays, missing nothing. Flirting at the Funeral is a story about love, money, and lost opportunities, ranging across Europe against a background of financial crisis, terrorism and the power of the super-rich.
OTHER BOOKS
By the same Author
Contemporary Fiction
Alcemi
Liminal
ISBN: 978-0955527210
Set among Greek ruins and a crumbling Welsh estate, this novel is about relationships – father and youthful son; son and elderly mother; fiancés, lovers, colleagues – and how none of them stay static.
Aled is used to his dad Geraint waxing lyrical about some saint’s clifftop lookout; some Greek temple or another hosting a thousand sacred prostitutes; some village near Corinth. Geraint is the county archaeologist, after all. So when travel agent Aled takes a recce trip to that same Peloponnese village, his father is surprised. When Aled fails to return on the eve of his marriage, Geraint becomes alarmed and sets out on his trail.
This quest, which is also a pilgrimage, will change all those involved. Relationships – father and youthful son; son and elderly mother; fiances, lovers; colleagues – none are immutable. This novel shows those thresholds of choice, those liminal moments and places where a door may open onto another world, or at the very least, another way of relating to the one we have.
Cross the thresholds of time, space and perception with this magical mystery tour de force, combining elements of Celtic and Greek mythology. The journey of discovery becomes a quest for purpose and self-realisation, as well as a detective story for a missing person.
Contemporary Fiction
Gwasg Carreg Gwalch
The French Thing
ISBN: 9780863817687
A novel set in mid-Wales in the mid-1990s against the backdrop of rural hardship where livestock export dealers clash with animal rights protesters.
The French Thing is a story about love, among other things, in mid-Wales, in the mid-1990s. It is a story about obsession, tribal divides and contested meanings, as well as about working, drinking and staying up late. It is about what can happen to people who inhabit a fractured landscape.
Located in an imaginary mid-Wales town, Llanfrychan, which fuses elements of Builth Wells, Llandrindod, Lampeter and Brecon, Chris Keil’s debut novel deals with the clash of cultures that was highlighted by the live export protests of the mid-90s.
English students, Welsh farmers, aging hippies, fading entrepreneurs and continental livestock dealers are brought together in the matter of an industry and the outrage it engendered. There is also infidelity and lust, and desperation at a way of life in a community where an individual’s every move is observed.
The French Thing looks at life in rural Wales without illusions or sentiment. Its farmers are real and suffering human beings, and their work is presented as an industry under almost intolerable strain. Although the nature of the changes being forced upon the countryside may have shifted in recent years, the pressures on small communities in terms of the lack of economic opportunities and the impact of external attitudes and moral codes remains true across Wales and beyond.
