Changes

In plot ''At the Edge of Light'' is just another rock and roll story. Young kids struggling to understand, failing, and seeking escape as an alternative. Death is everywhere. The reality of it. The longing for it. It is so all -pervasive that it loses its power to shock and simply becomes one of those 'yeah whatever' kind of answers that might be a solution to something or other.

"Full of insight and humour," the publishers tell us. The humour must have passed me by. The insight is into the darkness of the average young girl's soul... particularly when it's compounded by limited choices (of places to go, people to be with, futures to dream of). Kristina wants to be beautiful, wants to be loved... and she does what's she told to try to be those things... in which her body generally refuses to co-operate until she finds a way to force its submission to her will... and other parts of her mind sabotage her attempts for fear of not succeeding.

There is no plot as such - no from here to there tale to be told. Just the exposition of a few months of ordinary torment, spun around with descriptions of the local and family histories. A year in which Kristina falls in love, discovers the truth about her father's affairs and her mother's illnesses, and finds other troubles in the families of her friends. A depiction of a harsh world in which there is precious little love, scarcely more friendship and no loyalty whatsoever.

What rescues the novella from its own desperation is the power of description. Other commentators use words like 'lyrical', 'rhythmical' 'full of power and fury'. It is all of those things. With a touch of the magical realists , we're taken into the realm of Kristina's relationship with the river, with the ice of winter, and the too-bright waters of the summer lakes. The eerie track-thudding passage of the train echoes with the same lonely pathos that the long whistle whine moans over the American mid-west. A train that passes through, but provides no route out. Except for the final one.