Name: At the Edge of the Universe
ISBN: 9781481449663

Shaun David Hutchinson

At the Edge of the Universe

Jamieson

“I didn’t even need to check my phone to know that the universe had shrunk again, and the stars had vanished.
No. They hadn’t vanished. I’d given them away to someone who hadn’t deserved them, and I’d never get them back.” 


trigger warnings in this book for: rape, statutory rape, racism, child abuse, graphic violence, self-harm, drugs, homophobia, ableism

I don't think its any secret I was a massive fan of Shaun David Hutchinson's 2016 release, We Are the Ants, so his newest release was high on my 2017 anticipated list.

Fans of We Are the Ants will definitely enjoy At the Edge of the Universe - it features some of the same aspects that drew me into We Are the Ants - an honest look at mental illness and living as a gay teenager, beautiful prose, a sci-fi twist and raw emotion. 



(by rykesmeadow on tumblr)

At the Edge of the Universe follows Oswald Pinkerton, aka as Ozzie - who's pretty sure the universe is shrinking. His evidence? The boy he was dating, Tommy, has disappeared from the memory of everyone who knew him, including Tommy's family. This book follows Ozzie as he tries to unravel the mystery behind Tommy's disappearance and try to outlast the universe as it quickly shrinks around him. 

I found At the Edge of the Universe a much harder read then We Are the Ants - the issues and themes covered are definitely heavy and you can practically feel the weight the characters are bearing. It's very gritty reading, but I think the issues were dealt with very gracefully and carefully. The characters are incredibly complex, and very very flawed - but while their choices may not be the best in each circumstance, I like that it was clear they weren't endorsed out of text. I also liked there is genuine growth for these characters, and that despite the truly horrible circumstances these characters are enduring, the ending is relatively happy. 

I really liked the diversity in this one ! Ozzie is gay, Tommy is gay and biracial (one white one black parent), Lua, Ozzie's best friend, is gender-fluid and they're referred to with differing pronouns throughout the story. Ozzie's other best friend Dustin is asexual and Chinese-American, and another character Calvin is bisexual. I loved the amount of diversity in this story, especially Lua as a gender-fluid character because it is the first representation of gender-fluidity I've encountered personally. 


  “The funny thing is,' Calvin said, 'I thought I'd been breathing underwater this whole time, but I guess I've been drowning.”


My main issues with this book is the ending, and the beginning. It took me a while to get into this, with the beginning being a little meandering and slow-paced. It took a while for me to figure out in what direction the book was going. I also wasn't the biggest fan of the final act, I don't think I really "got" the ending and I felt a little unsatisfied with some of the ending. 

I was also a little irked about the ableism in this book - a character who cannot walk is referred to as "broken" and laments how no one will ever love him or want to be with him when he is a paraplegic. This was never challenged, and in the end there was a kind of "cure-all" for his situation. 

Despite this, I really enjoyed the main content of this story. The story is definitely gritty, and there are bits and pieces I really felt horror reading - but I also think these issues were written and dealt with so well. This is ownvoices for mental illness and gay rep and I think it's important to tell our stories as marginalised people - both the good and the bad.

The prose, as expected, is beautiful. Shaun David Hutchinson has a very poetic and lyrical style, but it's very simple and not bogged down in overly flowery writing. I genuinely enjoy his writing so much. I also loved that Henry and Diego from We Are the Ants had a little cameo!


  “It's impossible to let go of the people we love. Pieces of them remain embedded inside of us like shrapnel. Every breath causes those fragments to burrow through our muscles, nearer to our hearts. And we think the pain will kill us, but it won't. Eventually, scar tissue forms around those twisted splinters like cocoons. They remain part of us, but slowly hurt less. At least, I hoped they would.” 


Shaun David Hutchinson has earned a spot on my instant buy list. At the Edge of the Universe is written with the same raw emotion, quirkiness and hard grit that made me fall in love with his stories. He constantly presents his readers with flawed, complex characters who must exist in incredibly difficult, but honest situations. 

I love his books, and while this one didn't blow me away as much as We Are the Ants did, it's still a beautiful book. It' brutal and hard in places, but I think it is always honest and the narrative is layered I love Hutchinson's brand of sci-fi contemporary, and if you have enjoyed his previous books there will definitely be something for you here. If you haven't picked up one yet, I implore you too. At the Edge of the Universe would be a good place to start. 


  “Don't get so focused on where you're going that you forget the people you're travelling with. There's no point reaching a destination if you arrive alone.”

Alexis Clara

** spoiler alert **
           All I have to say is I didn’t miss Diego being mentioned(;
 
But in all honesty, Hutchinson, what the heck. I feel like my heart went from swooning to heart wrenching to a bit more swooning to finally end with it being tossed off the edge of the earth
I love everything behind it but I still wanna know why it happened and what the heck is up with Tommy
That’s it
It’s good 
I almost cried in class and that’s usually a good sign

jess

Okay: for the most part, I really liked this book. Most of this book was 4 stars, solid. I loved We Are the Ants; this book is very similar in that it's sci-fi-ish but mostly contemporary, and deals with loss. In a way, it was nearly too similar - I found both protagonists to be largely the same. 

Nevertheless, it was a good book, and it explores a lot of really complex and difficult subjects intertwined with the plot of the universe shrinking, though the sci-fi aspect wasn't as well integrated as I had hoped. Ozzie was a good, sarcastic character; I really enjoyed his narration. Calvin ... oh my god, I loved Calvin and wanted to hug him; he was probably my favourite character. Lua was incredibly badass and so cool. 

I really appreciate the diversity - Hutchinson has always written about gay teen boys, but nearly every major teen character is queer - genderfluid, bisexual, asexual. I'm a bit disappointed that the asexual character came at the expense of stereotyping an East Asian boy, making him super smart and asexual. 

And now: the ending. (view spoiler)[This is the main reason that I knocked it down a star. Because for everyone but Ozzie, nothing in the story fucking happened. It made the story feel inconsequential, and it was never explained in any way. I really wish we'd gotten an explanation or consequences; I wish that Calvin and Ozzie's relationship still remained in some way, and I wish that everything that happened during most of the book still resonated with the characters at the end. It felt futile. (hide spoiler)]

Emi Gilmore 

mia ¿

** spoiler alert **
           just some (pointless) thoughts

i really liked this book, like more than we are the ants??? i didn't realize that this had actually come out a year after that book but i was honestly expecting something similar but it was way better in my opinion. we are the ants was still good but just not as fleshed out i felt. it didn't have the impact on me that i thought it would. ATEOTU was different however.

first, i liked the sci-fi element of this book way more than we are the ants. the shrinking of the universe was brought up way more than the aliens in we are the ants, and it felt more important that way. it was also just really fun to read about... it made for some really fun scenes. i also really liked the way it resolved. i imagined the ending would be a little more open-ended but i thought the explanation worked and you got hints of it the whole way through.

second, the characters just seemed way more real and fleshed out. ozzie was a great protagonist, lua was amazing, dustin was great, calvin seemed very real, and even tommy was fleshed out for how little scenes there were with him. i was very happy with the diversity of gender identity in this book and how casual it was. it felt authentic and not pandering. (if that's what that means)

third, i really liked the emphasis on how plans can change and things don't always turn out how you're expecting them to. i know this always happens in books, but in a lot of YA, characters will go through a ton of challenges and then get into their dream college and be able to pay for it and everything's fine... it's so not realistic and i get sick of reading stories like that. this book didn't sugarcoat how messy life is but how it's fine and you just need to work with it. (i really resonate with this message right now, i just graduated high school but let's not talk about it)

basically the concept of not being able to understand the world is really resonating with me right now. feeling like you have no control over the world but still feeling like you're somehow the cause of everything bad that's happening is a feeling that i don't see a lot in books, and it just made me feel very comforted or whatever. 

one thing that i did think was weird was that you didn't learn until halfway through the book that tommy was black? it was implied so you kinda had an idea but then as soon as it was mentioned tommy was talking about the problems he was facing because of his race and i just wish it was brought up earlier so the discussion didn't seem so sudden? it also didn't really come up again so that wasn't great...

but all in all this book still had a lot of good discussions about teenage behavior (?), mental illness, depression, suicide, sexual orientation and gender identity and questioning either of those, and also family issues and the challenges of relationships and being too dependent on one person

also READ THE AUTHOR'S NOTE AT THE END. i thought it was great.

Emir Andrés Ibañez

ENGLISH REVIEW DOWN BELOW


Mi mayor error fue haber cogido este libro con muchísimas expectativas.
La novela anterior de Shaun, We Are The Ants, fue uno de los mejores libros que leí: tanto por la calidad narrativa como por la temática, que en ese momento me llegó muchísimo al alma por razones personales. Y desde ese momento no paro de recomendársela a todo el mundo.

Con todo este hype alrededor de este autor, me metí de lleno en esta novela pensando que sería igual o mejor que la anterior. Y al comienzo del libro pensé que no me había equivocado.
Si bien tenía la misma formula: chico adolescente con un novio ausente, problemas familiares, amigos peculiares y decisiones importantes que tomar. Sentí que la historia fue demasiado lenta. Cuando vi que estaba a mitad del libro y la historia todavía estaba buscando su rumbo, me di cuenta de que había algo raro en esta historia que no me terminó de convencer. Y llegando al final, sentí que fue todo muy abrupto, muy apresurado y me quedé con muchísimas preguntas.

No puedo negar que Shaun tiene ideas originales y extraordinarias, y sabe ejecutarlas muy bien. Se toma su tiempo, va construyendo el personaje paso a paso y nos va metiendo en su cabeza. Sabe transmitir con detalle la depresión adolescente, las ansiedades e inseguridades propias de la edad, y las enfermedades mentales, que son un punto fuerte en sus historias.

La filosofía del protagonista, tanto como la de los otros personajes, son lo que llevan el hilo de la historia. Sus monólogos y maneras de ver el mundo, qué los lleva a tomar determinadas decisiones, el futuro, y mucho mucho más es lo que compone esta historia.
Algo que me fascinó de este libro fue la diversidad de personajes, ya sea de diferentes etnias u orientaciones sexuales. Creo que la literatura Young Adult necesita más diversidad en sus personajes y eso es algo que tengo que reconocérselo también al autor.

Me da pena Shaun no tenga más reconocimiento, que sus libros no se traduzcan a otros idiomas o que sean pocos los que, fuera de Goodreads y librerías en EUA, lo conozcan. Pero eso no me va a impedir seguir recomendandolo a mis amigos que pueden leer en inglés y a quienes estén interesados en leer historias fuertes pero reales y sobretodo necesarias en el genero YA.
Sigo sosteniendo que hay algo que no me convenció, en esta novela en particular, pero eso no quiere decir que no se merezca una oportunidad. Le tengo muchas ganas a sus demás obras, así que ni bien el correo me las traiga me pondré al día porque creo que este autor es uno de esos que vale la pena.

Echale un vistazo a mi canal literario en YouTube
Seguime/Follow me:
Instagram
Twitter
Mi blog

My biggest mistake was to have taken this book with a lot of expectations.
Shaun's previous novel, We Are The Ants, was one of the best books I read last year: both for the narrative and thematic quality, which at that time hit me on my soul for personal reasons. And from that moment I don't stop recommending it to everyone.

With all this hype around this author, I got into this novel thinking that it would be the same or better than the previous one. And at the beginning of the book I thought I hadn't been wrong, although it had the same formula: teenage boy with an absentee boyfriend, family problems, peculiar friends and important decisions to make.
I felt the story was too slow. When I saw that I was in the middle of the book and the story was still looking for its course, I realized that there was something strange in this story that didn't feel... convincing. And coming to the end, I felt that it was all very abrupt, very rushed and I was left with so many questions.

I can't deny that Shaun has original and extraordinary ideas, and he knows how to execute them very well. He takes his time, builds the character step by step and gets us into his head. He knows how to convey in detail teenage depression, age-specific anxieties and insecurities, and mental illnesses, which are a strong point in their stories.
The philosophy of the protagonist, as well as that of the other characters, are what carry the thread of the story. Their monologues and ways of seeing the world, what leads them to make certain decisions, the future, and much more is what makes up this story.

Something that fascinated me about this book was the diversity of characters, whether of different ethnicities or sexual orientations. I think Young Adult literature needs more diversity in its characters and that is something that I have to recognize the author too.

I'm sorry Shaun doesn't have more recognition, that his books are not translated into other languages ​​or that there are few who, outside Goodreads and bookstores in the USA, know their books. But that will not stop me from continuing to recommend it to my friends who can read in English and who are interested in reading strong but real stories and, above all, necessary in YA genre.
I continue to argue that there's something that didn't convince me in this particular novel, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve an opportunity. I really want to read his other books, so when the mail brings them to me I'll catch up because I think this author is one of those that is worth it.

From the author of We Are the Ants and The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes the heartbreaking story of a boy who believes the universe is slowly shrinking as things he remembers are being erased from others’ memories. Tommy and Ozzie have been best friends since the second grade, and boyfriends since eighth. They spent countless days dreaming of escaping their small town—and then Tommy vanished. More accurately, he ceased to exist, erased from the minds and memories of everyone who knew him. Everyone except Ozzie. Ozzie doesn’t know how to navigate life without Tommy, and soon he suspects that something else is going on: that the universe is shrinking. When Ozzie is paired up with new student Calvin on a physics project, he begins to wonder if Calvin could somehow be involved. But the more time they spend together, the harder it is for him to deny the feelings developing between them, even if he still loves Tommy. But Ozzie knows there isn’t much time left to find Tommy—that once the door closes, it can’t be opened again. And he’s determined to keep it open as long as it takes to get his boyfriend back.

Moon of Pages

3,75/5 stars

I started reading this book without any expectations and I didn't really think I would like it much. But this book really surprised me and I liked it way more than I thought I would. 

This book handles some hard topics in a very good way and I think it was very beautifully written. I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of this book also. 

Ozzie, the main character, was very selfish and that kind of bugged me sometimes, but I also think he was very funny at times. I really liked Lua and I think Calvin was so adorable and cute oh my god 😻

I'm still kind of debating whether I liked the ending or not and if I really got it but besides that this book really surprised me and I'm very glad I read it.

diana

so, i was super excited to read this book. i had heard good things from We Are The Ants (which i have not read) and i was expecting good things from this one. overall, it was good! i loved the idea of the universe shrinking. the book has such a diverse cast and that immediately made me like it even more. Shaun David Hutchinson has a unique writing style that can easily captivate the readers and the story of At The Edge of the Universe was told beautifully. it touched on topics that aren't usually talked about and the author wrote about them well. 

one thing i did not entirely like was that in the beginning it was a bit slow building. i typically like books that start off a bit fast paced that keeps going but based on how the story was told, the slow building of the plot was what really put the book together. 

i would definitely recommend reading this book!

Laura

Believe it or not, I actually liked We Are the Ants. Sure, it was pretentious, and I'm really not into books that constantly muse about the Universe, but it was also beautifully written and felt original, and I ended up really liking both Henry and Diego and even found myself blinking away a few tears at the ending.

So with that positive prior experience with one of Hutchinson's books, I didn't expect myself to be so apprehensive picking up another. In fact, I wasn't even going to read this book at all, but I saw it in the library and walked past it like five times before deciding what the hell and adding it to my pile on the desk. 

By the way, this title/author name combination could give EverythingBeautifulIsNotRuinedbyDanielleYounge-Ullman a run for its money. I hate typing this one equally as much and I keep wanting to call it Across the Universe, which is a completely different book altogether and whenever I see it that Beatles song gets stuck in my head on a loop. Personally, I prefer long titles when the authors have a nice short name to go along with it- like The Tsar of Love and Techno or Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. But that's just me.

Fun fact before I actually begin. I started reading it when I was on vacation. I'm also petrified of flying. The flight to the place I was going on vacation to was just fine, and I was fine for the first two days until I started reading this book, and the plane crashed after Ozzie got off it. And for the rest of the vacation I couldn't read this book because I kept thinking about how the airplane I was supposed to fly home on was going to crash and I was going to die a slow and painful death. Obviously that didn't happen, but Jesus, I was doing just fine until this book. I'm not telling Hutchinson to put in a trigger warning or anything, though from what I know of his personality he probably would anyway. The only reason I'm bringing this up is to show that this book and I didn't exactly start off on the right foot. 

When I got back I started reading it again right from where I left off because I read Pride and Prejudice and also because I was actually kind of enjoying it- I just wish characters would stop bringing up that goddamn flight. I mean, it was already extremely pretentious and the theories made my head spin, but again, I read We Are the Ants and knew to expect a certain amount of that shit from his work and once I moved past it I could actually begin enjoying the book. And for the first 100 or so pages, I did. 

Continue reading this review on my blog here: https://bookwormbasics.blogspot.com/2...

At the Edge of the Universe

Reviews

Highlights