The Disability Book Archive

[ID: A book cover. The title “On the Edge of Gone” is written down the length of the centre in large blue and white caps. The author’s name “Corinne Duyvis” is at the bottom in smaller white caps. The background shows a woman standing on a destroyed road, facing a city. Rockets are taking off from the city and flying up into a dark sky of stars at the top of the cover. /end]

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Content Warnings:

Taken from author’s website:

• Fear of Death
• Parental Neglect
• Drug Abuse
• External and Internalised Ableism
• Mild Ableist Language
• Racist Microaggressions
• Natural Disaster (Comet)
• Global Scale Death of People and Animals due to Natural Disaster
• Humane Euthanisation of Cats
• Accidental Injury
• Graphic Description of Injury
• Graphic Near-Drowning
• Tsunami
• Off-page Death of Named Teenaged Character
• Starvation, Rationing
• Food Descriptions
• Holocaust References
• Blackmail
• Ransacking

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Summary:

January 29, 2035.

That’s the day the comet is scheduled to hit—the big one. Denise and her mother and sister, Iris, have been assigned to a temporary shelter near their hometown of Amsterdam to wait out the blast, but Iris is nowhere to be found, and at the rate Denise’s drug-addicted mother is going, they’ll never reach the shelter in time.

Then a last-minute encounter leads them to something better than a temporary shelter: a generation ship that’s scheduled to leave Earth behind and colonize new worlds after the comet hits. But each passenger must have a practical skill to contribute. Denise is autistic and fears that she’ll never be allowed to stay. Can she obtain a spot before the ship takes flight? What about her mother and sister?

When the future of the human race is at stake, whose lives matter most?

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Notes:

There is an audiobook.

There is an ebook. There is a kindle edition.

Though this is a standalone, Duyvis did publish a short companion story in the 2016 anthology Defying Doomsday. Both are standalone and can be read in any order.

There are also lesbian, Muslim and Jewish characters present in this book.

Here is a link to Duyvis’ website.

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Archivist Comments:

From what I’ve seen, while there are ships present in the book, I don’t believe the story ever leaves Earth.

I’ve seen the story and the actions of the MC described as very “technical”, as well as the apocalypse setting very much being present but feeling more like “a backdrop”.

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