- Paperback: 234 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (1 April 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099272636
- ISBN-13: 978-0099272632
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 1.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 395,221 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
On the Edge
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
What makes Edward St. Aubyn's satire about New Age soul-searchers so engaging is both his alarmingly familiar grasp of their rhetoric and his compassion for their angst. Ultimately, each of them is only searching for that simple, elusive quality of life: happiness. Peter Thorpe is a repressed, thirtysomething English merchant banker, in the Four Weddings and a Funeral mould of Englishman, who throws it all away to pursue his passion for a girl he spent three days in bed with but who is of no fixed address. Lured into the world of self-realisation by a chance remark of hers, trying to disguise his real reasons for being there, his quest takes him first to a commune in Scotland and finally to the Esalen Foundation in Northern California, where he meets an assortment of Americans at various stages of finding themselves. There are some wonderful comic set pieces: the anti-guru guru ranting his fire and brimstone sermon on psychic freedom; hippy child Crystal's recollections of being a nihilistic teenager, determined to stay awake until she dies; the difficulties of tantric sex. St. Aubyn's comical mastery of the phoney voices of the New Age never cheapens the underlying seriousness of the human mind's need to understand. --Emily Ormond
Product Description
Peter, a disaffected merchant banker in his mid-thirties, suffers a "coup de foudre" when he lays eyes on the delectable Sabine, and sets out on a reckless mission to track her down. His search takes him to some of the outposts of New Age culture, and there he finds something he wasn't looking for.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
St Aubyn has the kind of prose that stays in mind long after you close his book. He has something to say and he says it beautifully, a rare occurence these days. The story is entertaining and thought proking. He derides the New Age fanatics without anger, almost with tenderness. Very enjoyable.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As one of the lemmings described in St. Aubyn's brilliant new novel, and having read other UK Reader's Reviews, I feel uniquely qualified to offer a brief Other Side Of The Ocean review of this book. Simply put, St. Aubyn goes where other writers fear to travel, the lurid landscape of New Age "seekism." And best believe it, ON THE EDGE gives as good as it takes, or at least as good as it gets. It evokes the ditzy side of What Life Is Supposed To Be All About as well as any other such recent book. In fact, IT IS the only other such book. Criticisms of New Age rantings seem to be off limits in the booksellers' world, but what is sorely needed here is discernment. Findhorn and Esalen, two places visited, both deserve a good spanking, and they get it. St. Aubyn brings to this book a daring eloquence, along with all the ascerbic witty philosophical shrapnel found at the barrel's edge of this gifted writer's arsenal.
Deceptively autobiographical, it is the story of the split personage of Jean-Paul and Peter, one a brilliant French linguist, the other a midling English banker. Combined as one, theirs is the journey of a soul desperately seeking some kind of enlightenment, or at the very least a lessening of personal pain and angst. Each experiences Crystal, a guru-follower and gently drifting spiritual seeker in his own unique way: Jean-Paul in the crazed fascination of the Native American desert landscape, Peter in the sex-cum-spiritual arenas of Findhorn and the Esalen Institute in America. All three are tangled in the snares of various New Age proselytizers and hangers-on, from the not-so-thinly-disguised figures of Andrew Harvey (of Mother Meera fame) and Michael Murphy (of The New Milenium philosophy) to Lama Surya Das, Deepak Chopra, and numberless other oft-times Spiritual materialists (in the truist sense of the term - they make their livings off this stuff). It ends in a kind of tantric awakening where everyone gets their just desserts, except that no one really seems to "get it," especially Peter.
The book is quite good in place descriptions, of Findhorn, Germany, Los Angeles, Sante Fe, and Big Sur. Take this on LA: "One day the whole world was going to look like Los Angeles, he decided, not a city, nor the absence of a city, just ruined countryside." And St. Aubyn can wax poetic as when he describes a seal in Esalen's waves "with eyes that looked as if they had been swimming through their own tears."
If there is a weakness in this book - and it is hard to see - it is that St. Aubyn, even in his guises as Jean-Paul and Peter, attempts to engage and participate but still is only and ever an observer (a safe but sage one at that...), always apart, never quite fully IN. Of course, in the situations described, to be IN would be to fully lose your mind, much less ego, in chilly waters requiring a special and delicate kind of treading.
That this book is not a bestseller in England amazes me. What smug New Age novels are the English reading these days anyway? As an Irish friend noted recently, ON THE EDGE should be read by anyone seeking anything on the spiritual path. You just might come to a different, perhaps more realistic, view - one that doesn't froth around too much in under-examined too easily accepted and digested modern day spiritual pursuitism. Publisher take note - promote this book! It's bound to be a classic.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
I haven't enjoyed a book this much for a long time. It's 'laugh out loud in public' funny. The characters and situations are beautifully observed but it's the dialogue that makes this book such a delight. His ear for the nonsense spouted by many new agists is achingly accurate and quite simply a joy to read. This is the third book by this author that I have read in the last 6 weeks and I cannot recommend him highly enough.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Best book I've read in years
I agree with all the other reviewers except on the point about 'stodgy' writing. I believe that stylistically the writing is flawless. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Matthew J. Stowell
A Pleasure
I really liked this book. After the rather harrowing trilogy, `Some Hope', it was a pleasure to see that Edward St Aubyn retains a certain warmth for the poor old human condition. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Ciaran Kenny
Insightful Satire
A well written - if didactic - satire. The prose is occasionally stodgy but an enjoyable and enlightening read nonetheless.
Published 10 months ago by H&H
Style and satire
The book's strengths lie in the brilliance of its style and its acute satire of new age phenomena such as Findhorn and Esalen. Read more
Published on 6 Nov 2008 by another reader
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