It's astonishing that this is a first novel, it is so well written, well crafted and insightful. It's quite a difficult book to review. From one perspective, it's a relatively simple, very readable story about an accident and rescue, taking place within a few days, with a fairly small number of characters. But behind that simplicity there's a lot going on. It's intelligent and psychologically astute, and touches on a wide range of themes, from the nature of grief to identity, xenophobia, religion, courage... And it's extremely well written, even lyrical at times.

The story is about the events surrounding a bus that falls into a sinkhole early one morning in a small town in Ireland. But the bus crash itself is almost incidental: it is the backstories, relationships and interactions between the people in the bus, their loved ones and the rescue team that carry this novel. It also shows in a very realistic way how some people - both those directly involved and members of the public are quick to pass judgement and apportion blame, well before they are in possession of facts about what has actually happened.

It is above all a novel about death and grief, and at times it is painful to read. But there is humour too. Overall the pace is well balanced, both in terms of plot development and emotional intensity. The different characters are distinct and interesting, and there are some beautiful passages, such as the conversations between Lucy and Orla, trapped in the bus together.

This novel could appeal to a wide range of readers: those interested in digging deep into its themes, metaphors and characters (perfect for book clubs) as well as those who just want a fairly easy read that's not dumbed down.

<em>My thanks to Netgalley for giving me a free copy of this book. All my reviews are 100% honest and unbiased, regardless of how I acquire the book.</em>

In a small Irish village, a bus crashes unexpectedly and without explanation. Nina is the journalist on the scene, whie her ex-husband Tim is part of the fire service, carrying out his role as advisor. But there's more than meets the eye with this couple, as they're both still grieving the death of their baby daughter.

I wanted to really love this book as the idea of the story sounded brilliant however, I found myself dissappointed. I wanted to know more about the victims inside the bus crash; Orla, Lucy and Paul. The story mostly follows Anna and Tim, Anna's perspective I found interesting but with Tim, I started to find it dull as there was a heavy focus on his work, which went over my head.
We also hear bits from Richie the bus-driver and a passenger Alina, both whom were resuced quickly and also from Lucy who is still stuck inside the bus. I found Richie and Lucy to be seriously unlikeable characters, I couldn't connect to them at all and would have preferred to hear much more about Paul and Orla.
An okay read but I wouldn't recommend it to friends.

This book was not as I expected. The story is built around a bush crash in a small Irish village, a journalist and a police officer and a lost baby.

I felt detached from the storyline - I could not relate to or quite believe what I was reading.

We meet each bus passenger and hear their stories, an aspect I liked but at the same time, I still remained detached.

The story floats along, not a page turner but you are somewhat compelled to learn of everyone's fate.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy of this book for reveiw

Firstly, this book is written beautifully and looks tastefully at the sensitive issue of grief. However, for me I wanted to know more about the characters in the bus rather than Nina and Tim. Overall, I think this book is more of a character study of Nina and Time and their grief that uses the bus accident as a vehicle to portray that story.

For me it just felt a little drawn out and I would have loved more about Lucy, Paul and Orla.

Genre: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Legend Press
Pub. Date: Sept. 15, 2020

The title of this story is a reference to people, mostly through no fault of their own, who live on the edge of their emotions and lives. A town in rural Ireland wakes up to the news that a road has collapsed swallowing up a bus with eight people trapped inside. As the vehicle slowly falls deeper into the earth, the media is all over the story interfering with the rescue team’s attempt to get them before it is too late. Doesn’t this sound like a plot-driven novel? It is actually a character-driven tale that explores trauma, loss grief, and survival. Each chapter portrays the lives of the passengers and their families. As well as a news reporter and her ex-husband (no this does not morph into women’s fiction. Their loss is important to the theme of the novel) who is the fire department liaison.

Identify and racial issues are examined when the white male bus driver pulls out a brown-skinned female passenger. The author has such control over her characters’ voices that the reader can hear them speak. He is a regular sort of guy who just wants to please his beloved aging mom and win back his ex-wife. A sweetheart of a man, yet months before the incident he was suspended for saying a racial slur. The woman who he saves has lived in Ireland since she was a small child, married to an Irish man, knows all the Irish songs, and has adapted to the Irish way of life but the press refers to her as a Pakistani. Murphy nails her frustration.

While never feeling forced, the author will tug at your heart describing the underground conversations of those trapped in the bus, and the panic of their families above the ground. The author’s ability to go back and forth in time, to reflect on her characters’ multiple points of view, while never losing the feeling of their desperation makes them stick with you, haunting you, well after you have read the last page and know the outcome of their ordeal. I was so impressed that with this debut novel that I googled the author. I was not surprised to learn that many of her short stories were short and longlisted for literary awards. Without a doubt, I will be on the lookout for her next novel.

This book is told in four parts from when the bus crashes, to what happens during, when everyone is out and finally when the bus is pulled out of the hole.

It has multiple points of view, the bus driver Richie, Nina the reporter, Tim the information liaison, Lucy who is stuck inside the bus and Alina who got out because she was sitting closest to the driver.

The multiple views helped and hindered I think, for me I wasn't really interested in Richie and Lucy was a view that needed to be shared but I found her unlikable.

I wanted more from the divorced couple who still grieved their daughter, the conversations seemed real and pulled me in.
The view of Alina who is Lebanese and married to an Irishman named Sean was interesting. Her thoughts about how we say god in every day life like it's nothing. Drinking tea to fit in even though she'd rather have the lemon kind her mother used to make. How it seems she conformed to the social norms to fit in and not be seen, her marriage possibly another step to fitting in. I'd read a whole book from her perspective!

It's strange to feel connected to a book and also disconnected at the same time but I suppose that's like grief in a way which is a major part of this book.

Longlisted for Cambridge’s prestigious Lucy Cavendish Prize, this extraordinary debut almost defies categorisation. On paper it’s the tale of a terrifying incident where a sinkhole swallows an early-morning bus in a rural Irish town: we meet reporters covering the news, the emergency services responding to the crisis, those saved from the bus, the passengers still trapped underground and the families who gather fearfully and hopefully at the pit’s edge – but as we learn more about the characters’ diverse backgrounds, their motivations, relationships and hopes and dreams, the book unfolds into a unforgettable story of truly jaw-dropping depth and scope.

The rage-inducing pace of bureaucracy and the requirement to ‘follow protocol’ is set in stark opposition to the split-second life-and-death decisions made by the response team and those desperate for rescue. As people facing trauma tend to experience, these tragic events leave the protagonists questioning what truly matters in their lives, while the media spotlight shining brightly on those saved from the wreckage forces them to confront illuminated truths that might have been better left in the shadows.

The book also plays with the characters’ perception of time, and will leave you wondering how so much can be covered in just a few days. The trapped bus riders, watchless, sleep to make time speed up: those above ground long for more hours with those they’ve lost. It’s a reminder that time, like pain, is relative: or as Nina, the journalist covering the incident thinks to herself: “on difficult days, she remembered an article she read that said the slower your heart rate, the faster your perception of time passing, so that while children and insects felt days stretch out for weeks, adults feel time speed up on them.”

Murphy really puts her cast of characters on trial, continually testing their individual capacity for both heroism and humanity: they are simultaneously wracked with physical and/or emotional pain, yet still hopeful for the future in bewildering yet beautiful sets of contrasts that all add up to make Where The Edge Is into one of the most memorable and affecting reads of the year.

Cambridge Edition Book Club 'Autumn Reads' October 2020 (link to follow)

I went into the book thinking that it would be a story of a rescue after a bus accident. It wasn't. This book uses a bus accident as a premise to tell you the stories of different people who are connected through the accident. There's a reporter covering the families of those in the bus, a man (her ex-husband) who works with the firemen who rescue the passengers in the bus, the bus driver, and two of the bus passengers.
Each of them has a past, a story of grief, of not being accepted by society in one way or another, and that's what I liked about the book. Through these 5 characters, topics such as friendships, relationships, loss, identity, and religion are covered. The main story is that of Nina (the reporter) and her ex-husband, who grief over the loss of their baby daughter, and now have to work together. At first I thought that maybe one of them would have been enough to cover this perspective, but different people have different perspectives, and I thought the way in which this different perspective was done in this book very interesting.
What I didn't like was that it felt slow. However, that could well be because I expected it to be a much more fast-paced book based on the description of the book. In reality, the characters' stories take the main stage and the bus accident slowly develops in the background. If you start the book knowing that in advance, I think it will be a much more enjoyable read.

Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I am going to start by saying that the synopsis for this book does it no favours. It appears on the surface to be a book based on the tension surrounding a bus being swallowed by a sinkhole, trapping most of the passengers inside and the consequential evacuation of a nearby school and hospital. However, this is not actually what this book is about at all; in fact, the bus crash features rather lightly in the grand scheme of things. It mainly follows former married couple Nina, a journalist, and her firefighter ex-husband, Tim, whose grief over the loss of their 11-month-old daughter, Aisling, is compounded by their involvement in the bus accident.

I feel the bus incident is used as a clever metaphor to comment on the precarious nature of grief and suffering, much like the bus being in a precarious position, and the twenty-four-hour period in which the authorities attempt different methods of freeing the passengers could be representative of the long and tortuous path grief, pain and bereavement take you down with no means of possible escape. Where the Edge Is is a poignant and heart-rending meditation on the nature of trauma, and in particular grief, that one feels after an unexpected and devastating loss. Gráinne’s stories are about family and identity, about staring life down and choosing the kind of person you want to be.

The author explores an array of vastly different themes, including life and death, friendships, relationships, irredeemable loss, identity, religion and our innate desire to search for that one perfect place we can call home. The book, perhaps accidentally, although most likely intentional, crosses into philosophical territory examining namely the nature of suffering, existence and whether humans have a purpose here on Earth. It is a debut that marks the beginning of what I can only imagine will be a fruitful career and makes me excited about future books. Thankfully, amongst Murphy's lyrical prose there are sprinklings of much-needed humour which break-up the dark tone of the story and there are hopeful moments throughout which also lift the spirits. Rich with understanding only those who have suffered the grief and trauma of a horrific loss can convey, this is an engrossing and quietly thought-provoking read. Many thanks to Legend Press for an ARC.

“Where the Edge Is” is a measured and thoughtful story - a heart-rending account of loss, coping and conflict in a rural Ireland setting. The author Grainne Murphy has couched what becomes the main story of how the parents have failed to come to terms with the loss of their child inside a new and current tragedy of a bus disappearing into a sink-hole.

Nina works as a TV reporter while former husband Tim works as a liaison with the Fire department. They are brought together after a period of time apart in the course of their daily jobs, dealing with the bus tragedy. We learn more about their tragic breakdown as the details are intertwined with the events of the current crisis.

The characters are entertaining, overbearing, haunting and frustrating as you might expect to find in such a random set of circumstances. Both stories are meshed together well and the dialogue both spoken and withheld is a delight.

Just too many characters with huge issues which are hardly connected to the actual bus crash. I wanted to hear more from the tragic people on the bus but instead was treated to an extremely intelligent narrative about all the other characters in the book.
It failed for me only in that it didn’t match what I was expecting b

Grainne Murphy’s moving debut has the reader on edge from the very beginning. This novel is centered on a bus accident in Ireland and follows several characters in the immediate aftermath.

Murphy builds suspense as she slowly reveals more of the story through the eyes of several of the people impacted by the bus accident. Although the accident is a prominent part of the story, Murphy’s biggest focus is on the impact of trauma on the characters’ lives.

There is a LOT packed into this novel. Murphy explores fidelity, the significance of marriage, the impact of losing a family member, and other traumas. But somehow, it isn’t too much. I was eager to push to the end to learn how the main storyline wrapped up, but the expansion of the characters’ worlds along the way became increasingly interesting as the book continued.

If you’re not afraid of looking at some of the more painful parts of relationships (romantic, familial, and other), then I absolutely recommend adding this to your list.

"They had been here before, like many broken couples before them. Loving each other most at the moment of parting. A tempting hole to fall into, but a hole no less. If they were both in it, who would be there to pull them out? The job of a partner was to make the other better, not worse."

There are so many layers in this book. On the surface, it's about an accident that puts the passengers' lives at risk and the people involved in the rescue operation. If you peel a layer below, it's about survivor's guilt, it's about revisiting the decisions you've made that got you to a particular moment, it's about choosing to live your life differently as a result of a moment that altered it, it's about working with your ex. It's about pressures with your boss. And if you peel it once more, you see it's about grief, loss, connection, family, sorrow, anger and quiet desperation.

"That I’m with a wonderful woman I don’t love enough simply because she’s everything that I’m not. Everything you’re not. That her children will never accept me fully and my second chance at fatherhood will vanish into dust. I’m afraid that I’ve given up the job I love and taken a lesser version because I feel it’s all I deserve. I’m afraid I’m only moving misery from point a to point b. I’m afraid that when Aisling died, my best life died with her."

It's about things we don't let ourselves feel. It's about putting one foot in front of another and living life but not really "living" life. About settling and then not settling. About owning who we are. About what it takes to own who we are.

"For a sudden, savage minute, he admired Jason’s angry bluster, his refusal to parent silently."

There are so many beautiful sentences in this story. Short but powerful and gets right to the heart of exactly what drives each character. How what we notice about others says a lot about us. How the way we react in a situation says a lot about us.

"‘When my father died,’ Alina said, ‘I didn’t cry for a long time. My husband and his mother didn’t understand. I could see them watching me, as if they were not satisfied until I wept.’ She shrugged. ‘Tears are a crude measurement of grief.’"

This is a quiet but beautiful book about the lives we live, the things that happen to us, the choices we make as a result, and how, in the end we get to choose.

thank you to netgalley and Legend Press to an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This a very well written novel about grief, loss, loneliness, relationships and a sense of belonging, which also touches on religion, racism and cultural identity in small town Ireland. The story centers around a bus crash and is told through the eyes of the victims, the emergency services and the journalist covering it. Getting into the story took me a while as I didn’t immediately connect with the characters and subject matter is quite heavy, but overall it is a very promising debut.

What a beautifully written, intellectual, and perceptive novel about a bus accident in the Irish countryside and its aftermath, the author approaches this story with consideration and an empathetic, thoughtful perspective. It was an overall enjoyable and interesting read, however there is so much left unsaid it almost seems as it’s the first in a series. The ending just didn’t come to a proper conclusion for me. There were a few downsides. One character is Muslim and the author delves into a lot of rumors and conspiracy theories about terrorism and thing was just distasteful. There are also a few too many characters to keep track of and I would have preferred a less numerous cast. The author is talented and it was an engaging read overall.

This book had so much potential but I feel that too much of the story was given to Nina and Tim on the outside of the bus crash rather than to those involved/trapped in the bus. I would have enjoyed this a lot more if there was more story from inside the bus.
A good debut novel which was well written.

An edge of your seat read that won't let go once it draws you in. This debut author is one to watch. Can't wait to see what she comes up with next. Amazing. Check it out. Happy reading!

I've been chewing on this one for a while, and I was just horribly unsure of where to place it. Ultimately, I feel like the story concept is really strong, and the idea of discovering and uncovering grief (especially in the course of work) is a difficult topic to broach. The disconnect with this book for me is more a matter of the subject matter and the narrative not quite linking up as well as I would appreciate. There's a certain beauty in microanalysis of humanity, however, this book seemed to meander off into the microcosm and forget about the rest of the story. I thought it had so much potential, but what I anticipated being the main crux of the book seemed to just vanish and become more ancillary.

The bus crash became more a means to an end rather than an actual narrative, and I didn't connect well to the character. I feel like it's an attempt at that minutiae form of literature, where the ins and outs of people's lives are explained, but it just seemed to fall short. I really wanted a book that took the very serious events in this less as a device and more as the focus. However, the writing does give a good, realistic image of a small town in the wake of a tragedy- I just wish it had taken it further.

Where the Edge Is is an impressive debut from Grainne Murphy. The book opens with the news of a bus crash, as we are introduced to Nina on her way to work. Subsidence has caused a road to collapse, and the early morning bus topples into the crater, trapping its passengers inside. As a reporter who focuses on human interest stories Nina is keen to travel to the site and speak to the families and friends holding vigil and waiting for news of their trapped loved ones. A surprise encounter at the scene allows the reader insight into Nina's past and the tragedy that has reshaped her life and career, and introduces another of the narrators of the story.
The author uses multiple perspectives including Nina, the driver of the bus, Ritchie, Aliana a young woman of Lebanese origin who was rescued from the crash and Lucy who remains trapped on the bus. Each of these characters feel authentic and have a distinctive voice, which suggests skill on the part of the author, especially since some have only a few short chapters interspersed throughout the book. I particularly liked the character of Alina, and found her story and experiences the most interesting part of the book . The story touches on issues like racism, political corruption and the impact of trauma and grief, so this is not a lighthearted read by any means.
While I did enjoy the book it is not without some flaws, the resolution of the bus crash plot was somewhat abrupt and I found it jarring in the context of the book as a whole. It also felt like some story threads petered out without any real resolution or conclusion, but these are minor gripes about a very well crafted character driven book that held my attention from start to finish.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Caution, spoilers ahead.

I went back and forth on a rating for this book because there are genuinely parts of it that I very much did enjoy. Where The Edge Is begins with a bus falling through a hole and you'd be forgiven for imagining how the story may spin out from that Michael Bay beginning but the author has a very different tale to tell. I found myself absorbed into a study of human flaws, things like misogyny, indirect racism and microaggressions. Heavy stuff, all wrapped up within another story of painful grief, relationships and the healing process.

I guess that I just felt there was too much left untold. The bus is more of a subplot really, and I wanted to know more not just about the people (Paul wore headphones all the time and felt bad about a sexual experience gone wrong yet otherwise he just sort of bleeds) but also their end. It really threw me that the moment contact was made in the next chapter we learn they just died in different ways, totally offscreen. The parents are all also suddenly sidelined. I'm fairly sure that a couple of the people on the bus are only identified by what they regularly wore, and the homeless woman from the beginning of the book that seems woven into events disappears. I think I would have appreciated if these ideas were completely separated, because the bus timeline alongside Nina and Tim's story of pain occasionally doesn't gel well and many pieces are left scattered, neglected.