This is a review I found at Goodreads. I was immediately drawn to the descriptions of the people and thought how much like the elite are. The Precipice is maybe reference to people really beginning to see the elite for what they really are. Not all that interesting or particularly smart despite how they see themselves.
"Goncharov's cast feels real. I believe these people, or people like them actually lived, breathed, had conversations and had concerns about life, death, honor, and family. His situations aren't grandiose or manufactured, they arise naturally and normally.
The people in the Precipice are annoying, funny, pathetic, ridiculous. We've all met someone like that. They all have flaws, even the all-beloved and intelligent Vera, turns out to be way less free thinking and liberated that she thinks she is. She isn't so much judged by her immediate circle for her "fall," as much as she literally can't believe she isn't the ideal she thought herself to be. Her anarchist boyfriend is just a gadfly without any guile. He isn't half as interesting as an anarchist-nihilist seducer really should be. Raisky, the main character is so tiresome, half the women in the book want to avoid him for chapters at a time. One may think Vera is a tease, but one can't blame her for avoiding Raisky's annoying never ending, "woe is me," "I'm an artistic genius and will teach you about life" rants. Some of the secondary characters turn out to be much more insightful and interesting than the main ones. At times, you wonder, where is Goncharov going with this thread, and maybe you never really find out…."