To the Bright Edge of the World" is a stunning and subtle performance ... One of the many wonders of To the Bright Edge of the World is the skillful, confident way it invests the elemental with human dimensions. This is enchanted writing.
Ivey is a gifted storyteller and a lyrical prose stylist, but this historical novel’s foremost strength may be its contemporary relevance ... We often count on our artists to see the wild beauty our civilized eyes no longer can, to remind us, as Ivey does in her remarkable new book, what the land has allowed.
Ivey’s characters, without exception, are skillfully wrought and pull the narrative forward with little effort. She does not stoop to blanket depictions of tribal life or Victorian women, and instead has created a novel with all of the fine details that make historical fiction such an adventure to read. Fans of The Snow Child will not be disappointed.
Perhaps because of my preference for heartbreak and dread in fiction (a personality disorder, I admit), on occasion I wished that Sophie and Allen weren’t so relentlessly good. The colonel is, mostly, patient, forward-thinking and resourceful. Sophie is a plucky feminist with a sense of humor. I craved a little of the tension that marked the behavior of that couple coping with the loss of a baby in Ivey’s first novel. The new book could also be shorter; I know from experience how often I have fallen in love with my research and bogged down a narrative. Nevertheless, To the Bright Edge of the World is a moving, surprising story.
Ivey’s writing is assured and deftly paced. She presents a pleasing chorus of voices and writing styles in an amalgam of journals, letters, newspaper clippings, greeting cards, official reports and more. While the Colonel’s diary entries are log-like in their matter-of-fact descriptions (at least at the start of the trip), Sophie’s writing is more intimate and idiosyncratic, revealing her independent spirit and kind heart. The couple’s moving love story binds the multilayered narrative together.
Ivey chose a difficult path in To the Bright Edge of the World, but she navigates fearlessly. Inside this unusual novel, with its photographs and maps and wildlife illustrations, is an epic adventure intertwined with a story of genuine love.
Ivey’s simultaneous wide scope and focus on detail are part of what makes this novel so absorbing. It’s no mere testosterone-fueled tale of heroism ... The contemporary frame is a bit corny, though ... The thing I most wish Ivey had done differently, though, seems to stem from the same impulse as something I love, which is her refusal to fetishize suffering.
Ivey manages to imbue this faux-documentary exposition with a prickly tension, a thrumming suspense shot through with foreboding ... The precision of such descriptions of the natural world ground the novel in a gritty verisimilitude that then allows Ivey to build a fanciful, daring imaginative edifice ... she manages to merge the two [storylines] at the end with an unexpected and original device that left this reader grinning with satisfaction.
Inspired by a report published in 1885 Ivey has transformed a exploration chronicle into a lusciously written series of accounts by the travelers and those related to this harrowing adventure ... To the Bright Edge of the World is a page-turner, a fascinating story that is broad in its scope as it is compassionate in its message ... Eowyn Ivey has created a world that is dangerous and beautiful, worrisome and satisfying, all in a novel that readers will not soon forget
These interwoven voices are held together by the clever frame of the book's modern-day premise ... Far from being incapacitated, Ivey makes the most of the superabundance of her chosen subject, resulting in an absorbing reminder that, 'each of us is alive only by a small thread.'
Much of this material has a museum-like quality to it. True to her thematic focus on the partiality of our vision, Ivey approaches her material with so much respect and such attention to detail that it often fails to breathe. A reader’s trek through Ivey’s pages can therefore double what Forrester and his fatigued men frequently feel, as they slog forward. But both reader and Forrester’s crew also experience the imaginative phenomena I’ve described above (and others like it). Making good on what Ivey’s title promises, they take us to the edge of the world and the heart of Alaska, challenging us to see the mystery in everyday life.
