ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the endlessly complex endings in Jordan’s literary fiction, while exploring the various ways in which death remains a central concern, both formally and thematically. To date, Neil Jordan has directed seventeen feature films, and is the author of seven novels and a seminal collection of short stories. Throughout Jordan’s eclectic and expansive oeuvre, there is an abiding and self-conscious fascination with death, both as an existential fact and as a narratological conundrum. The chapter draws on some key psychoanalytic concepts as a means of exploring Jordan’s most fundamental theme: the relationship between longing and belonging. Jordan’s novel, Sunrise with Sea Monster, first published in December 1994, revisits the theme of familial and national reconciliation. Neil Jordan’s fascination with death and the impossibility of closure seems less peculiar and idiosyncratic; on the contrary, his work is rooted in a long-standing tradition of narrating death that remains remarkably vital and alive.
