Deadly Space Between [Paperback]

Patricia Duncker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2003

Toby Hawk is a solitary boy in a family of Amazons. His mother, only fifteen years older than him, is a painter on the brink of commercial success. His great-aunt is a wealthy textile designer; her partner, Liberty, a barrister. Meanwhile, eighteen-year-old Toby's world remains a small, closed round of school, domesticity and surfing the Net at night. But everything changes when his mother takes up with a fascinating but enigmatic scientist, Roehm. Patricia Duncker's gripping novel is a disturbing tale of Oedipal passion. It is also an eerie psychological ghost story in the European tradition, whose sources - Freud, Faust and Frankenstein - haunt the pages.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Her literary reputation well established with Hallucinating Foucault and The Doctor, Duncker here draws on Mary Shelley, Herman Melville and Freud, yet the work is powerfully her own, erotically charged and, finally, enigmatic. Most of this provocative novel is narrated by London-bred Tobias, the 18-year-old son of Iso, an unmarried girl who gave birth to him before she was 16. She has never identified his father, and perhaps not unconsciously encourages him to be infatuated with her, even allowing him certain sexual freedoms. Iso is fascinated by a huge man, identified only as Roehm, 25 years her senior; he is physically overwhelming and intuitively aware of her feelings and movements. Tobias, no less than his mother, develops a near-sexual relationship with him. When Tobias discovers that Roehm is actually his father, the Oedipal nature of this strange menage a trois is evident. In Melville's words, they have transgressed the deadly space between. Tobias finally tries to kill Roehm, but is unsuccessful, and after he and Iso flee to the glacier-covered mountains of Switzerland (corresponding to Shelley's Arctic ice floes), Roehm follows. His body is soon discovered in a crevasse near their retreat. When Iso goes to the police to confess to having killed him, they laugh. They have examined the body, they say; it is two centuries old and has been identified as one Gustave Roehm, a Swiss alpinist. Mother and son depart, but find they are still not entirely free of Roehm. The major source Duncker fails to acknowledge is Henry James, and if her contemporary ghost story lacks the exquisite subtlety of The Turn of the Screw, it captures the imagination, grotesquely repellant yet sinuously compelling.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

At 18, Toby Hawk is immersed in an all-female English household that includes his too-young seductive mother, Isobel; Great-Aunt Luce; and Luce's lover, Liberty. For a while, Toby's curiosity about his mysterious paternity is deflected by Iso's artfully distracting physical contact with her son, who is both his mother's protector and her bedmate. Iso's occasional lovers have never really bothered Toby until the sinister Roehm reenters his mother's life, enraging Luce with his eerily controlling influence. Even as Toby rails against Roehm's hypnotic powers over Iso, Roehm draws Toby into a dark, confusing world of sexual ambiguity. Pushed to the brink and beyond, Toby flees with Iso after attacking Roehm. To no one's surprise, Roehm doesn't stay dead any more than the Hawks stay hidden. This foray into the horror genre by award-winning novelist Duncker (Hallucinating Foucault) is a stiff hodgepodge of recycled themes: the living dead, adolescent cybersurfing, incestuous relationships, dark emotional furies, a shadowy father figure, and the harsh forces of nature. This disappointing book is not recommended.
- - Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Picador (March 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330490109
• ISBN-13: 978-0330490108
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pleasant read though not completely compelling, September 16, 2003

By 

Lars (Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Deadly Space Between: A Novel (Paperback)

I found this book to be a very pleasant read. As another
reviewer pointed out, the characters are very well drawn
and Duncker's style is an absorbing eloquent one. She is
able to use all kinds of literary references without the
book becoming to self-indulgent. Above all the story is
unfolds at high-speed.

But that is where the catch is. Although the story moves
along quite swiftly and develops a claustrophobic breath
it kind of unveiled all too quickly in the last portion.

Everything I'd read up to page 210 made me yearn for a
more developed explanation or at least a more dramatic
finale. As it is, the book unfolds very rapidly and the
conclusion [although it's still unnerving] left a lot to
be desired and a lot of questions unanswered.

Open endings and unanswered questions are something you
expect from a novel like this. But still, I felt that a
lot of information we had been given, like for example,
Roehm's work in the laboratory were simply not mentioned

anymore. It felt as if Duncker had tried to reach a kind
of surprise finale and just left out a lot of stuff that
would take to much time to tie into the plot again.
Having said that, perhaps other, more observant readers
might have a better understanding of the plot and seen
some things I have missed.

But still, it was a good read and a nice book. If you like
suspense stories this is certainly for you. Although, be
warned that some of the sexual scenes can be very explicit
to a lot of readers. I've read a lot of stuff but I still
found the sexual scenes a bit unsettling.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creepy, unsettling, eerie, engaging ghost story, September 3, 2003

By 

James G. Greenhill "Jim Greenhill" (Durango, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Deadly Space Between: A Novel (Paperback)

Nothing is quite what it seems in this memorable novel by Patricia Duncker. To read the Editorial Reviews above (especially the "Publishers Weekly" one) is to learn too much about the novel before reading it. One of the merits of this novel is the surprises as the story unfolds. Another is the atmosphere, an unsettling creepy quality. This is not a book that made me comfortable -- especially the sexual issues -- but that's the point, and it's a book that becomes more compelling the more one reads -- especially as the mystery surrounding Roehm unfolds. A great strength of the book is the characters, who are very well drawn. There is some awfully good fiction coming out of Britain at present (see also Pat Barker's excellent "Border Crossing," for example) and this is another example.