The Space Between Us

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A moving as it is magical and mysterious. Doug Johnstone has hit it out of the park again’ Mark Billingham

Umrigar weaves together the narrative with colloquial expressions that authenticate the dialogue and create a unique sense of place. Even though I didn’t always understand, I always got the gist.An adrenaline-filled ride of a novel, laced with empathy and understanding for our instinctual need to connect' Rachelle Atalla

Set in Edinburgh, The Space Between Us is the story of three people who become connected in the most bizarre fashion. Lennox, Ava and Heather are all facing challenges in their lives that appear to be insurmountable. On the same evening, all three are in the midst of possible life-changing events when they sense something in the air and see an extraordinary scene in the skies above them. The next all three know is that they wake up in a hospital ward, all having suffered a stroke, but all now remarkably unaffected and fully recovered. Many others are left affected by this strange phenomenon but for Lennox, Ava and Heather, life is going to get very very strange.

Speaking off the alien visitor: “Sandy”, as they call, is one of my favourite types of literary alien. The closest comparison, again, is the Arrival-aliens; sentient enough to communicate, but so completely alien that their comprehension of some concepts is so different from our human ones. In this case, those concepts being “connection”, rather than time in the case of Arrival-. The implications that has on communication, understanding and even the way we view ourselves is wonderfully explored here. When they arrive on Earth, Nathaniel is angry at Tom, who kept Gardner's training a secret. Gardner is quarantined at NASA while undergoing medical tests to determine his fitness for life on Earth. He escapes before seeing the tests showing he cannot live on Earth very long, and finds Tulsa convincing her to help him find his father. Poignant and compelling, evocative and unforgettable, The Space Between Us is an intimate portrait of a distant yet familiar world. Set in modern-day India and witnessed through two compelling and achingly real women, the novel shows how the lives of the rich and the poor are intrinsically connected yet vastly removed from each other, and vividly captures how the bonds of womanhood are pitted against the divisions of class and culture. a b c d e Andriani, Lynn (January 1, 2006). "With child, within class in Bombay". San Francisco Chronicle. Hearst Corporation.