Mapping the Edge: A Novel - Hardcover

Dunant, Sarah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375503234 ISBN 13: 9780375503238

Publisher: Random House Inc, 2001

Synopsis

Anna, a self-sufficient, thirtysomething, single mother, heads for Italy for a short vacation, possibly with a new lover, leaving her beloved young daughter behind with friends, but when Anna does not return from her holiday, a heated and chilling debate erupts over reasons for her disappearance. By the author of Transgressions. 30,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Journalist Anna goes missing on a trip to Italy, and all her friends and child, Lily, can do is worry, and imagine. Stella rushes back to England from Holland to help Paul look after young Lily and the pair of them have to come to terms with what Anna's permanent loss would mean.

Dunant writes well about the new tensions implicit in new sorts of family and new ways of life; Stella's free life with a semi-detached lover, Paul's relationship with the younger Mike--can these survive having to bring up a child? And what has happened to Anna? Dunant plays games and tells us two very different thrilling stories of Anna's absence. Is Anna perhaps the victim of a drugged drink, and abduction, and is locked in a remote house, a woman in Gothic danger? Or is she caught up in a more modern fantasy--off having raunchy sex with a charming but unsatisfactory lover who talks to her about art and takes her to look at rare paintings? This is an intense book, all the more effective for its every element being provisional; Dunant uses thriller elements to invigorate a novel of loss and risk. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

Part of what makes MAPPING THE EDGE so compulsive to read is that it functions with real confidence and assurance on several levels. Two thrillers are interwoven with the gradually accumulating tension of those left behind, arousing complementary anxieties and exploring the darkness at the heart of Dunant's characters (INDEPENDENT)

Dunant's fiction is trade-marked with heroines who take chances and ignore risks. Not a whiff of political correctness; the rules they make or break are all their own. The subtext of the novel - how loyalties are strained, how relationships change - is e (LITERARY REVIEW)

This is a tantalising novel, the fictional equivalent to one of those Ayckbourn or Pirandello plays in which different "realities" run parallel to each other...it is always interesting and sometimes remarkable in its stealthy creation of an atmosphere of unease, terror and mystery (SPECTATOR)

It is easy to see why Dunant chose the strategy of duelling stories - the missing, by their nature, invite multiple explanations. And she pulls off this difficult narrative trick with considerable technical skill, aided by a clean prose style and a deft (SUNDAY TIMES)

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0375503234
• ISBN 13: 9780375503238
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 301