Miranda Luby, The Edge of Everything, Text Publishing, April 2025, 320 pp., RRP $22.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781923058330
When we first meet Lucy, she has been startled by a plains-wanderer, an endangered bird, flying into her bedroom window. She cares for the bird overnight before taking it to a nearby animal sanctuary. Any hopes she has of getting a job there or even volunteering, quickly disappear when she meets the boss. He, unfortunately, recognizes her from a prank she and her friend Jacinta played the night before. This prank is called by the girls a ‘life bomb’, something that comes from a YouTuber they both like and is designed to give a big adrenaline rush.
Lucy, in some way, equates the bird with her brother Charlie, whom we learn, died almost a year earlier. The death has had a devastating effect on the whole family. Much of Lucy’s behaviour since has been influenced by her grief. She seems unable to motivate herself and spends a lot of time in her room. The ‘life bombs’ she devises become more extreme – she shoplifts and tries to persuade Jacinta that they should get tattoos on New Year’s Eve. Jacinta does not want to continue with this kind of reckless behaviour, however.
Lucy finds her parents’ insistence that they are fine irritating and unconvincing. She is afraid that they might separate as a result of Charlie’s death, something that makes her more uncertain and worried. She also believes that Charlie was her parents’ favourite and that she is somehow second best.
She is constantly afraid of falling into what she describes as a black hole in her mind, a terrifying image of a downward spiral. In a cathartic moment, she is able to confront this, explain what is going on and face her own fear of sudden death. It is Ben, whom she meets at the animal sanctuary who brings this about.
In her grief Lucy has also pushed away a number of her closest friends as they seem to her to treat her as if she was only her grief, tiptoeing around her in case they upset her when she really wants some normality. She realises too, that her brother’s best friend, on whom she previously had a crush, really only needs her as part of his own grieving process.
In a way, this is a coming-of-age novel in which Lucy comes to understand others around her. She tells her friends how their well-meaning concern has made her feel, she develops a new understanding of her parents’ relationship and what makes a family and, while recognizing that the tragedy of her brother’s death will always be with her, feels ready to move to the next stage of her life.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel
