The Space Between Us is a fictional look at the relationship between two very different women. Set in modern day India the novel explores how class affects the lives of women. There are two main characters which the novel moves between. One woman is an upper class Parsi housewife, Sera Dubash and the other is her servant of twenty years, Bhima. The novel reveals the similarities that each woman has by focusing on domestic abuse, loss, and disappointments. The novel begins with the disappointment in Bhima’s life that affects not only herself but Sera and her family. Maya, Bhima’s seventeen year old granddaughter, is pregnant and unmarried. While Maya was away at college, which Sera paid for, she involved herself with a mystery man and became pregnant. At first she refused to hear Bhima and Sera requests that she abort the baby. Bhima hounds the girl each day about the pregnancy, desperate for the knowledge of who had done this to her granddaughter. Exhausted Maya tells Bhima the name of a young man at her college. Bhima travels to the college on loaned money from Sera to confront the man. What she finds is not only does the young man completely deny his involvement in Maya’s pregnancy but he also does not really know who Maya is. Disappointed and completely hopeless for Maya’s future she tells the girl she must get rid of the baby. Ultimately the more time she spent locked up in Bhima dirt shack in the slums the more she realized that she could not have the baby and went to the doctor friend of Bhima’s son in law. After the abortion Maya was sullen and refused to speak to Bhima or Sera. After we learn about the initial conflict in the story we are then taken through the lives of the main characters. We find out how Sera and her dead husband really got along. How Sera believes that Bhima has been her best friend throughout the years but refuses to acknowledge the woman’s importance to her completely because she does not want to give her servant that power over her. I gave this book a 3 out of 5 because the book moves slowly and too much time is spent bouncing between the two main characters lives that often times it becomes unclear who is the subject of the chapter. It takes a long time to reach the main story’s plot (although you suspect who the true father of Maya’s baby is shortly after meeting his character and hearing about his marital problems he and his wife “had.” Also many times the accents seem forced making certain characters less of a sympatric being and more of a joke. This novel is not a complete waste of time however. Some of the metaphors used in the novel are actually quite poetic and fit the idea that the author was trying to portray.
I noticed it was a very smooth read. It flowed so well I just flew through the book. Not really because I was dying to see what happened next, but just because of the easiness of it. But from my experience with easy to read books, they often lack detail. The characters physical attributes were rarely mentioned and when they were they were vague. For instance Bhimas scanty hair, the wrinkles on ones face or how Viraf was "handsome" hardly gives us a clear visual. But I don't think it was needed anyway, that is not what the book is about. We can see these characters in our own minds however we want. What we did get was a very clear picture of the emotional pain the main two Characters Sarabai and Bhima had gone though in their lives. Gut wrenching at times Thrity used such beautiful illustrations and comparisons to make you feel the way her characters were feeling. I would often re-read sentences because of the way she elegantly wrote out the pain on the page. While feeling very close to them in their lowest moments I also felt very far removed from the characters on the opposite spectrum. The characters were almost completely devoid of individualism as to wants and needs on a more personal level. I still can not tell you other than wanting to have a clean safe home and a loving honorable family who Sara or Bhima truly were as people on the inside. But Bhima mentions this in the end, which almost gives you a sense that the book is trying to forgive itself for having left that side of the characters out. The book gives you a very heavy feeling and almost leaves you (especially if you yourself have experienced many betrayals) with no hope for humanity. You see that everyone, even the main characters are only out for their own needs in the end. Or maybe that was just my take. The book despite its depressing constancy had me laughing out loud at times and though I would not read it again, I am glad I did read it once.
Bhimi is a servant in contemporary Bombay. She works for Sera Dubash. The class divide between them is vast. Yet there are similarities to their lives that bind them across these lines. Bhima is an old woman with calloused feet, mildewy armpits and an affection for chewing tobacco. She is raising her granddaughter, Maya, by herself, her daughter and son-in-law having died of AIDS, her husband having left with their son, Amrit, many years back. Maya, a promising collegian, has dropped out of scho
—Will Byrnes
My favorite quote from this book:"...How, despite our lifelong preoccupation with our bodies, we have never met face-to-face with our kidneys, how we wouldn't recognize our own liver in a row of livers, how we have never seen our own heart or brain. We know more about the depths of the ocean, are more acquainted with the far corners of outer space than with our own organs and muscles and bones. So perhaps there are no phantom pains after all; perhaps all pain is real; perhaps each long-ago blow lives on into eternity in some different permutation and shape; perhaps the body is this hypersensitive, revengeful entity, a ledger book, a ware house of remembered slights and cruelties."But if this is true, surely the body also remembers each kindness, each kiss, each act of compassion? Surely this is our salvation, our only hope - that joy and love are also woven into the fabric of the body, into each sinewy muscle, into the core of each pusating cell?"
—Colby
Visceral, frightening that this kind of world exists for women- still, and unbelievably sad, I had a hard time getting through this book- especially when I figured out a major plot twist early on. However sharply this novel focuses on the life of a poor woman in Bombay India, which it did well, it lacked a certain sense of hope that I need by the end of a tale to make me fall for a story.Sure Bhima, the main character, let go of her pain in the end, and I suppose sometimes the sense of utter hopelessness and inevitability makes for gripping story telling as it engages quite a few emotions. But every man in this book treated women as offal to be wiped from the bottom of their shoes and more damning for me, the women betrayed each other at just about every turn. Because of this, the simple metaphoric ending just wasn't... enough. (Especially considering all they went through.) If this were non-fiction I wouldn't have the same desire because I know full well how very real these situations are. But when its told in fiction, I like to see a redemptive resolution.Perhaps if we had some sorta epilogue letting us know the women are okay? I don't know, their stories just begged for reparation, even if it only meant them living free from bitterness for once, however fantastical it seems. As mentioned earlier, something of the sort is alluded to at the end, but we don't get to see it and that frustrated me. I cant believe I'm saying this but I almost wish Bhima had committed suicide at the end- like I *thought* we were headed- although I would have hated that too. At least it wouldn’t have felt so artificial. (Umrigar was so real with everything else- Why end it with a cheap metaphor??) Here's something about me and books- even if I don’t like the way a plot or ending goes, if it’s true to the characters I can at least respect it. This felt too contrived.So yeah. Not for me. Not a bad writer- she made Bhima's pain filled world feel very real- but in the end disappointing.
—Zeek
