At the Edge of the Solid World

In a snowbound village in the heart of the Swiss Alps, a husband and wife find their lives breaking apart in the days and months following the death of their firstborn. Meanwhile, on the far side of the world in the couple’s hometown of Sydney, a man on the margins of Australian society commits an act of shocking violence that galvanises international attention. As the husband recognises signs of his own grief in both the survivors and the perpetrator, his fixation on the details of the case feeds into insomnia, trauma, and an obsession with the terms on which we give value to human lives. At the Edge of the Solid World is a compulsive, compelling and lyrical novel, told with extraordinary empathy and emotional intelligence. It is the story of a child’s life cut short after just one day. Of a mother and father bereft at the loss of the future they’d imagined. Of an unspeakable crime, public outrage, anguish on the streets and a media frenzy that engineers heroes and villains, martyrs and scapegoats. Most of all, it is a profound meditation on the nature of loss, the resilience and fragility of the family unit and the stories we tell to explain the world. Praise for Blood and Bone by Daniel Davis Wood ‘[Blood and Bone] fulfils two objectives: shedding light on a dark past, and exploring intellectual and aesthetic problems that the writing of such a story might create. The story is grounded in factual material and Wood has filled the gaps with imagined scenes and conversations, but the tale is made seamless by a tight structure and a hypnotic style that seems to owe something to the work of Gerald Murnane.’ —Kerryn Goldsworthy, The Sydney Morning Herald