The Space Between Us
Thrity Umrigar
Harper Perennial €??
JOURNALIST Thrity Umrigar is a high-flyer: she’s won the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard, written for the Washington Post and Boston Globe, and taught in the US.
So it’s with a certain dashing control that she approaches this story of duty and love.
Slum-dweller Bhima works for wealthy widow Sera. But the two women are wound in bonds of friendship: Sera has paid Bhima’s adored granddaughter’s college fees; Bhima has concealed Sera’s secrets.
But now Maya, Bhima’s granddaughter, has thrown it all away – the fool’s got herself pregnant. The only solution has to be an abortion, and the only one who can help is Sera.
Trouble: Sera is under the thumb of her abusive husband; and how far will loyalty between women go when it crosses the tie of an unhappy marriage?
Lush and graceful, this novel set in Bombay is just the book for the bedside. It’s leisurely in the telling, with a cunning subplot ready to engage you every time you pick it up.
Nothing is so engaging as a really nasty villain, and Umrigar has written a real doozy of a bad guy here. Highly recommended.
*****
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