What if the doomsday preppers were right and the end of the world was nigh? Corinne Duyvis' On the Edge of Gone takes place in the Netherlands about 20 years in the future, and at the beginning of the novel, we join teenager Denise and her mom as they (and the rest of the world) are getting ready for a comet to strike the planet. The very wealthy have left Earth via spaceship, and so have some of the very lucky, who won lotteries for spots on those ships. The remaining population have been assigned to shelters to ride out the strike and immediate aftermath. Denise, her sister Iris, and her mother are in the latter group, but when the appointed day comes and Iris is nowhere to be found, Denise and her mother find themselves running late to get to their shelter in time. On their way, they come across one of Denise's former teachers and her partner who have had an accident, and are permitted to take shelter aboard the spaceship they've been assigned to in return for helping them get there.

Once she's on the ship, Denise immediately starts trying to figure out how to stay...wouldn't anyone want to explore the stars instead of try to survive in the kind of post-apocalyptic situation that killed the dinosaurs? The rest of the plot unfolds from there: Denise's quest to find her sister and secure herself and her family room on the ship. When I was reading it, I kept expecting the ship taking off to be when the plot would really start, and it took me until about a quarter of the way through to figure out that wasn't the point. The point are the questions the scenario raises; most poignantly, how do you figure out who should live and who should die? What kinds of skills are really necessary anyways? We can all agree on doctors, cooks, and engineers, but who's more important: artists or lawyers? Young people or experienced people?

There's a movement out there centered around the idea that we need diverse books. I agree. I'm never going to be one to go on a deliberate spree to only read books by or about a particular gender or racial category (my favorite author is White Man Jeffrey Eugenides), but I think a lot of people's...fear or resistance or whatever it is, exactly, that makes them suspicious of others who aren't like them is based on a lack of exposure. It's easy to demonize gay people, or trans people, or people of color, to think of the world as Us v. Them, when you don't know any of Them. Once you get to know Them, it turns out they're people, just like you, with the same kind of hopes and dreams and bills and taxes that you have. Even literature can be an important bridge to build empathy...a book implicitly asks you to care about these people on the page, to imagine yourself in their shoes. Which is why it matters that Denise and Iris are mixed race, that Denise is autistic (as is the author), that Iris is transgender. Those aren't the kind of people you normally read books about. And this book in particular is well-crafted, with a story that draws you in and makes you ask yourself how you would deal with the situations that are presented therein. Definitely worth and read and a think. ( )

This book was exciting and sad and felt real despite being about the aftermath of a comet hitting the earth. While I do recognize how other reviewers felt the diversity boxes just kept getting checked off, the reality is that the author did a beautiful job of pulling the story together and making those exact details a part of the overall experience. ( )

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2.5 Stars ( )

I had to stop reading this one at less than a third in, because I was bored with the plot and it didn't seem to be getting better. It's well-written otherwise. But I've read three other novels with autistic protagonists that I enjoyed far more. ( )