“Over the Edge of the World” by Elizabeth Cunningham: A Book Review by Judith Shaw

Elizabeth Cunningham’s new book is a marvel you won’t want to miss. It’s subtitled, “A Fairytale Novel” which lets you know you are in for a magical experience. Fairytales have meaning and contain wonder, beauty and truth.  Fairytales awaken new insights for the reader, inspiring us all to think more deeply about our world.  “Over the Edge of the World” certainly does all that. It will leave you pondering the difficult reality of our world today and the sacrifice and grit needed to create it anew. 

The world Cunningham creates breaks your heart with its underlying allusions to tyranny, suffering and destruction. The plot is like a golden thread that leads you on a labyrinthian journey from suffering in the material world, inward to the center, where songs of beauty cleanse your soul. From that center you follow the golden thread again, back to the material world, refreshed and renewed with hope and courage to carry on.  References to traditional fairytales and nursery rhymes are built into the golden thread of the story.

The book opens at the end and weaves its way back and forth through time to arrive at the end again. We first meet Rose when she is a very old woman as she tells the story that began long before she was born; long before her mother and her mother’s mother were born.

We first learn of the Grannies from Rose and come to understand them better as we follow the golden thread. The Grannies are like elemental goddesses, representing the raw power and nurturing beauty of our natural world – Earth, Wind, Fire and Water.

Rose tells the story of two worlds. There is an Inside World, run by a man with an insatiable need to control nature and defy death. And there is an Outside World, filled with regular folks attempting to survive in a world controlled by Inside World. This is where we first meet three children—Briar, Sal and Jack. There is always a Jack.

And here is where the action begins as we follow Briar, Sal and Jack on their adventures and their longing for a better world. We learn of the Beauty Singers who greet the dawn every day with a refrain that varies slightly throughout the whole book about the difficulties of life.

come the sorrow, come the pain
come the sun, come the rain
come the toiling all day long
come the night, come the dawn

But it  always ends with: Beauty will go on, go on, beauty will go on.

Everyone knows there is an edge to the world which, if gone over, leads to endless space. Being thrown over that edge is the ultimate punishment meted out by Inside World to the people of Outside World. But the children begin dreaming of escaping their brutal existence by going over the edge of the world. Their refrain, with multiple variations expressing this desire, is also repeated throughout the book. 

Over the edge of the world we go
over the edge of the world we fly
kings and queens
when we have wing
we all have wings
over the edge of the world we go..…

There are others you’ll meet in this tale of two world, some tender and some cruel—all part of the journey from extreme attachment to the material, to the heart’s center and back out again to the manifestation of a new world—a world filled with magic, wonder and awe.

Be it a novel, a fairytale, an epic poem, or a path to follow the labyrinth, Cunningham’s new book is most certainly a feminist manifesto, helping us all dream a balanced and caring world into reality. It’s sure to touch you deeply and stay in your thoughts for a long time. For as Cunningham asserts over and over

Beauty will go on, go on, beauty will go on.

You can purchase a copy of “Over the Edge of the World” at Bookshop.org—the online store who supports independent booksellers. Available as a paperback, ebook or hardback

_{View Judith’s art and oracle decks on her website, Judith Shaw Art}