The Space Between Us
Ratings11
Average rating3.5
The national bestselling novel—from the author of Bombay Time, If Today Be Sweet, and The Weight of Heaven—vividly captures the social struggles of modern India in a luminous, addictively readable novel of honor, tradition, class, gender, and family—now available in a limited Olive Edition. “Umrigar is a skilled storyteller, and her memorable characters will live on for a long time.”—Washington Post Book World Set in modern-day India, The Space Between Us is the story of two compelling and achingly real women: Sera Dubash, an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife whose opulent surroundings hide the shame and disappointment of her abusive marriage, and Bhima, a stoic illiterate hardened by a life of despair and loss, who has worked in the Dubash household for more than twenty years. A powerful and perceptive literary masterwork, author Thrity Umrigar's extraordinary novel demonstrates how the lives of the rich and poor are intrinsically connected yet vastly removed from each other, and how the strong bonds of womanhood are eternally opposed by the divisions of class and culture. Poignant, evocative, and unforgettable, The Space Between Us is an intimate portrait of a distant yet familiar world.
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2 primary books4 released books#1 in Between Us
Between Us is a 4-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2005 with contributions by Thrity Umrigar, Preston Walker, and Liam Kingsley.
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not great, but poignant in its simplicity, and the ending makes you want to sigh and hug Bhima and buy balloons.
I read Honor by this author and really enjoyed it so wanted to go back and read one of her earlier books, but I really didn't get on with this one.
I liked what it was trying to say but the way it was written was so slow and dragged out, with flashbacks which were way too long. It just felt like a chore to wade through it, and it's not even a long book.
Perhaps I'll stick to ger newer books.
Quit on page 49. Bhima is shaming her granddaughter Maya for getting pregnant at 17, physically and verbally abusing her. Sera is repulsed by her maid, Bhima, even though really there's no reason for it. Bhima was going to demand that the boy who knocked up Maya marry her, but I'm like 90% sure Maya was raped. And Sera and her husband, when they were first married, lived with his mother, who was always listening in on their arguments surreptitiously, and when Sera expressed concern, her abusive husband would tell her she was just being paranoid and would ask her if she was on her period. (Flames on the side of my face.) This whole thing just feels really messed up and hopeless and I don't want to keep reading it.
