The Edge

Gibbons’s tense thriller encompasses racial prejudice and domestic violence without ever seeming to be dulled down into an issues story. Danny and his mother flee her abusive partner and return to the childhood home she had previously rejected. Danny is delighted with the exchange having watched helplessly as his mother suffered. It’s to be a new life: a life away from fear. And Danny’s happy to be back staying with his grandparents, despite his grandfather’s strangely hostile behaviour. But happiness is harder to find than Danny has expected. The deep-seated and dangerous prejudice that he meets needs confronting. Told as a number of separate, first-person narratives, The Edge makes an excellent audio book as between them Malcolm Freeman and Lucy Akhurst provide the contrasting voices of Danny, his mother, the violent Chris, stubborn old granddad and the long suffering gran – all of whom have something important to say.