The Space Between Us [Paperback]

Thrity Umrigar (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 321 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (2009)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B002LYIXP2
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (183 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,600,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thrity Umrigar is the best-selling author of the novels Bombay Time, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet and The Weight of Heaven. She is also the author of the memoir, First Darling of the Morning. Her books have been translated into many languages and published in numerous countries.

The Space Between Us was a finalist for the PEN/Beyond Margins award, while her memoir was a finalist for the Society of Midland Authors award. Thrity was recently awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize for midcareer artists.

Thrity was born in Bombay, India and came to the U.S. when she was 21. As a Parsi child attending a Catholic school in a predominantly Hindu country, sh had the kind of schizophrenic and cosmopolitan childhood that has served her well in her life as a writer. Accused by teachers and parents alike of being a daydreaming, absent-minded child, she grew up lost in the fictional worlds created by Steinbeck, Hemingway, Woolf and Faulkner. She would emerge long enough from these books to create her own fictional and poetic worlds. Encouraged by her practical-minded parents to get an undergraduate degree in business, Thrity survived business school by creating a drama club and writing, directing and acting in plays. Her first short stories, essays and poems were published in national magazines and newspapers in India at age fifteen.

After earning a M.A. in journalism Thrity worked for several years working as an award-winning reporter, columnist and magazine writer in America. She also earned a Ph.D. in English. In 1999, Thrity won a one-year Nieman Fellowship to Harvard, which is given to mid-career journalists.

While at Harvard, Thrity wrote Bombay Time. The publication and success of the novel allowed her to make a career change and in 2002 she accepted a teaching position at Case Western Reserve University, where she teaches creative writing, journalism and literature. She also does occasional freelance pieces for national publications and has written for the Washington Post's and the Boston Globe's book pages.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

162 of 171 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "It was all a waste, just an endless cycle of birth and death; of love and loss", February 1, 2006

By 

M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Space Between Us: A Novel (Hardcover)

Using turbulent India, with all its social, environmental and economic problems as a background, author Thrity Umrigar tells a very humanistic tale of love, loss and ultimately betrayal. Two very different women who, in their struggle to cope with their heartache and sorrow, discover an inevitable commonality, a spiritual unity, even though they are divided by the seemingly insurmountable gulf of money, opportunity and class.

Sera Dubash is a wealthy educated Parsi, who lives a privileged upper-class life in Bombay. Her married life fraught with violence and brutality, she ached for a marriage that was different from all the "dead sea of marriages she saw all around her," a marriage begun with such high hopes that fizzled out. Now she is widowed and lives happily with her daughter and son-in-law, looking forward to the birth of her first grandchild.

Bhima is poor and illiterate, forced to eek out an existence on the edges of Bombay, enduring the stench and fifth, the open drains with their dank pungent smell, the dark rows of slanting hutments, the gaunt and open-mouthed men. Bhima has worked for years as Sera's domestic housekeeper, and has built up a trustworthy relationship with her employer's family; Sera's the only person who treats her like a human being, has been steadfast and true to her, and never despised her for being ignorant, or illiterate or weak. Sera even promises to financially help Bhima's granddaughter Maya go to college. But no one - least of all Bhima - expects the seventeen-year-old Maya to get pregnant.

Bhima is convinced that only education is the key to success, an escape from the back breaking and menial labor that has marred the lives of her mother and her mother before her, and aware that a child will end Maya's chance at a better life, she tells her granddaughter she must have an abortion. Bhima seeks Sera's help; both convinced that terminating the baby is only way to ensure Maya will be able to break the hold poverty has had on the family.

Bhima, however, has had her own demons to contend with. Her daughter and son-in-law are dead, stricken by an incurable disease; the elderly woman talking herself into believing that this unborn child is but a "demon growing in her granddaughter's belly." Her emotions run the gamut of anger and fear, fear for this stupid innocent pregnant girl; yet she holds onto the unacknowledged hope that the child's father will perhaps step forward to assume his responsibility, to marry and build a life with the woman who would bear his first child.

Through their shared experiences, Sera and Bhima are inevitably bound; and it's almost as though Bhima has an eyeglass to Sera's soul, feeling exposed under the x-ray vision of Bhima's eyes. But they are divided by a hypocritical society that perpetuates discriminative caste differences, and looks down upon the poor: Sera is kindhearted and concerned for Maya's welfare, but during lunch, Sera always sits at the table, whilst making Bhima squat on her haunches on the floor nearby, forced to use separate utensils. Sera is secretly disgusted at the foul odor of the tobacco that Bhima chews all day long, the woman almost embodying everything that is repulsive about the slums just a short distance away.

Umrigar writes of a jolting, momentary world that is full of illusion and false hope, where Sera and Bhima - both disappointed by the men they loved - are obliged to make the best of any given situation they land themselves in. Sera often resorts to tears and frustration, determined to shut out the realities of the evil that lurks within her family, whilst Bhima is left to pick up the pieces, to soldier on, cloaked in anger and misery. Each wound penetrating deeper and deeper, as she feels the old familiar yearning of what she has left behind.

The author excels in vividly bringing to life the sights, sounds and smells of Bombay, the street urchins, the stray dogs, the impoverished nut vendors, and the hollow-eyed slum dwellers, a city mad with greed and hunger, power and impotence wealth and poverty, where the weak and vulnerable are elbowed out of the way, and where the poor treat the middle class like royalty, when they should actually hate their guts.

Gorgeously imagined, this intimate and sensuous tale is constantly fraught with tension, the human condition this author's specialty. It is impossible to imagine more frightening circumstances than those conditions that Bhima must endure at her age, her heart broken by the people around her with their deceit, their treachery, their fallibility, and their sheer humanity. Through the course of the story, Bhima learns that none of the old rules, the old taboos apply, hers is a fragile existence, a world constructed of sand - shaky ambiguous, and ultimately impermanent. Mike Leonard February 06.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating and Moving, July 13, 2007

By 

David Dunaway - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Space Between Us: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

Yet another wonderful and moving novel by Thrity Umrigar. The story vividly unfolds on each page, and I found myself unable to put the book down. It tells the story of Bhima and Sera, two people who's lives are very much different, but in many ways the same. Yes, there is much sadness in this book. However, that sadness is there for a reason and is meant to be thought-provoking. It forces you evaluate your life and your relationships. It also helps you to better understand not only the person you are, but the kind of person you want to be. The character of Bhima moved me the most, and will live on in my heart.

52 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars At Times, The Writing Is Utterly Beautiful, BUT...., July 14, 2007

By 

Marilyn Raisen (New York State, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Space Between Us: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

I was immediately drawn into this book which, at first, seemed so promising. Found Bhima's plight to be very compelling. Sera's situation was awful also, but I was still interested in their stories. I think that, for me, the story fell apart when the truth of Maya's predicament unfolded. I don't really know why, but I simply stopped caring.... This was Bhima's & Sera's story and should have remained as such. Again, the writing -- especially describing Bhima's entire story [the hut, the hospital scenes, etc.] -- was, for me, very real & beautifully rendered. However, the ending was unconvincing, in my humble opinion. Extremely disappointed given such a beguiling & goregous beginning!! [I probably would have rated this book a 2 Star read if not for the writing, as well as for Bhima's story [initially a 4 star which unravelled into soap opera].