These are stories about power: children without it and adults vying to get or keep it. A small boy struggles with his parents’ divorce, a doctor fails to understand the limits of his medical power, a wronged wife finds a uniquely powerful way to wreak revenge. Sometimes satirical, sometimes innovative and lyrical, the stories home in on those moments when power can spill into powerlessness: the split-second when a self-satisfied teenager is held at knifepoint by muggers, the trip to the woods with the `poor kids’ which teaches a small girl she’s no better than them. They chart the opposite moments when people wrest back power: a daughter rebels against her violent father, a struggling writer decides to expose a con man arts worker, a little girl who wishes her lost father would come back finds she has magic powers.
But it’s a slippery thing, power, and these vivid, wry stories spring surprises: for nothing, in the end, is ever quite what it seems.
- ISBN10 1844716503
- ISBN13 9781844716500
- Publish Date 15 April 2009 (first published 1 October 2007)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 20 May 2011
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Salt Publishing
- Format eBook
- Pages 112
- Language English
- URL http://saltpublishing.com/products/balancing-on-the-edge-of-the-world-9781844713943