The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar Reviews
Space Betwixt Us (Umrigar)
The Space Between Us
Thrity Umrigar, 2006
HarperCollins
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060791568
Summary
Each morning, Bhima, a domestic servant in contemporary Bombay, leaves her own small shanty in the slums to tend to another adult female's business firm. In Sera Dubash's dwelling house, Bhima scrubs the floors of a house in which she remains an outsider. She cleans piece of furniture she is not permitted to sit on. She washes glasses from which she is non allowed to drink.
Nevertheless despite being separated from each other past blood and class, she and Sera observe themselves bound by gender and shared life experiences.
Sera is an upper-middle-form Parsi housewife whose opulent environment hide the shame and disappointment of her abusive union. A widow, she devotes herself to her family, spending much of her time caring for her pregnant daughter, Dinaz, a kindhearted, educated professional, and her mannerly and successful son-in-law, Viraf.
Bhima, a stoic illiterate hardened by a life of despair and loss, has worked in the Dubash household for more than than twenty years. Cursed by fate, she sacrifices all for her beautiful, headstrong granddaughter, Maya, a university educatee whose education—paid for by Sera—will enable them to escape the slums.
But when an unwed Maya becomes pregnant by a man whose identity she refuses to reveal, Bhima'due south dreams of a better life for her granddaughter, as well as for herself, may be shattered forever.
Poignant and compelling, evocative and unforgettable, The Space Between The states is an intimate portrait of a distant yet familiar world.
Prepare in modern-day India and witnessed through 2 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 captureshow the bonds of womanhood are pitted against the divisions of grade and civilisation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Where—Bombay, Bharat
• Education—B.A., Bombay, University; M.A., Ohio State
University; Ph.D., Kent State Academy
• Awards—Neiman Fellowship to Harvard
• Currently—lives in Cleveland, Ohio, The states
A journalist for seventeen years, Thrity Umrigar has written for the Washington Mail service, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and other national newspapers, and contributes regularly to the Boston Earth'due south book pages. She teaches creative writing and literature at Instance Western Reserve University.
The writer of The Space Betwixt Us; Bombay Fourth dimension, the memoir First Darling of the Morning: Selected Memories of an Indian Babyhood, and The Weight of Heaven, she was a winner of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University. She has a Ph.D. in English language and lives in Cleveland, Ohio. (From the publisher.)
Learn more about Umrigar from an interview on author's website.
Volume Reviews
Umrigar is a perceptive and often piercing writer, although her prose occasionally tips into flamboyant overstatement....[H]er portrait of Sera every bit a woman unable to "transcend her middle-class skin" feels bracingly honest. Just Umrigar never makes a similar imaginative spring with Bhima. The housekeeper seems exaggeratedly ignorant and too good-hearted to be true.Yet this novel does permit for one moment when Sera and Bhima close up the space between them. In a flashback, Bhima sees the results of a brutal chirapsia the young Sera has received from her hubby and...gently rubs medicinal oil over her mistress'due south bruises. At get-go, Sera recoils from Bhima's touch, and then tearfully submits. Information technology'due south a powerful scene, with an uncomfortable echo of the age-old mode the social classes have come together: furtively, in silence, in the night.
Ligaya Mishan - New York Times Volume Review
Against terrible odds, Bhima must notice the strength and the volition to keep going. The tragedy is that there is so little to promise for. Which brings us to the implicit, pivotal question raised at the offset and end of the book: Why survive at all in the confront of continuous despair? The life of the privileged is harshly measured confronting the life of the powerless, but empathy and compassion are evoked by both stiff women, each of whom is forced to make a dissever choice. Umrigar is a skilled storyteller, and her memorable characters will live on for a long time.
Frances Itani - Washington Post
Umrigar's schematic novel (subsequently Bombay Fourth dimension) illustrates the intimacy, and the irreconcilable course dissever, between 2 women in contemporary Mumbai. Bhima, a 65-year-sometime slum dweller, has worked for Sera Dubash, a younger upper-middle-course Parsi woman, for years: cooking, cleaning and tending Sera afterwards the beatings she endures from her abusive husband, Feroz. Sera, in plough, nurses Bhima back to health from typhoid fever and sends her granddaughter Maya to college. Sera recognizes their affinity: "They were akin in many ways, Bhima and she. Despite the different trajectories of their lives—circumstances...dictated by the accidents of their births—they had both known the hurting of watching the bloom fade from their marriages." Just Sera's affection for her retainer wars with ingrained prejudice against lower castes. The younger generation—Maya; Sera's daughter, Dinaz, and son-in-police force, Viraf—are also caged past the aforementioned strictures despite efforts to throw them off. In a final plot twist, grade allegiance combined with gender inequality challenges personal connection, and Bhima may pay a biting price for her loyalty to her employers. At times, Umrigar's writing achieves clarity, but a narrative that unfolds in retrospect saps the volume's momentum.
Publishers Weekly
Announcer Umrigar (Bombay Time) evocatively describes daily life in two very different households in modern-solar day Mumbai, where the traditions that separate the classes and the sexes notwithstanding persist. The relationship between Sera Dubash, an upper-class Parsi housewife, and Bhima, her servant, is full of contradictions. They talk over cups of tea like girlfriends, only Bhima must squat on the floor using her own cup, while Sera sits on a chair. Bhima is loyal to Sera, merely sometimes has to talk herself through minor humiliations and slights from her employer by reminding herself how generous this adult female has always been to her. While money and grade go on these 2 from fully bridging the gap between them, they remain closer than either of them can fully see, for as women, they suffer equally the abuse of men, the loss of love, and the joys and sorrows of motherhood. Umrigar beautifully and movingly wends her mode through the complexities and subtleties of these unequal but caring relationships. Recommended for all fiction collections. —Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Constabulary Lib., Malibu, CA
Library Journal
Set in contemporary Bombay, Umrigar'southward second novel (Bombay Time, 2001) is an affecting portrait of a woman and her maid, whose lives, despite class disparity, are equally heartbreaking. Though Bhima has worked for the Dubash family for decades and is coyly referred to as "one of the family," she nonetheless is forbidden from sitting on the furniture and must use her own utensils while eating. For years, Sera blamed these humiliating boundaries on her hubby Feroz, but at present that he's dead and she's lady of the firm, the ii women still share afternoon tea and sympathy with Sera perched on a chair and Bhima squatting before her. Bhima is grateful for Sera, for the steady employment, for what she deems friendship and, mostly, for the patronage Sera shows Bhima's granddaughter Maya. Orphaned every bit a child when her parents died of AIDS, Bhima raised Maya and Sera saw to her education. Now in college, Maya's future is like a miracle to the illiterate Bhima—her caste volition take them out of the oppressive Bombay slums, guaranteeing Maya a life away from servitude. Just in a vicious mirror of Sera's happiness—her only kid Dinaz is expecting her showtime baby—Bhima finds that Maya is pregnant, has quit school and won't name the kid's father. As the situation builds to a crisis indicate, both women reflect on the sorrows of their lives. While Bhima was born into a life of poverty and insurmountable obstacles, Sera'due south privileged upbringing didn't relieve her from a husband who trounce her and a mother-in-police force who tormented her. And while Bhima'due south matrimony begins blissfully, an industrial accident leaves her husband maimed and an alcoholic. He finally deserts her, simply non before he bankrupts the family unit and kidnaps their son. Though Bhima and Sera believe they are mutually devoted, soon decades of confidences are thrown upward confronting the far older rules of the form game. A subtle, elegant analysis of grade and power. Umrigar transcends the specifics of two Bombay women and creates a novel that quietly roars against tyranny.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
i. At the cease of The Space Between U.s.a., Sera has a tough choice to brand. Can you envision a scenario where she could've made a different choice? What would it have taken for her to take made a dissimilar choice? And what would be the consequences of that selection?
2. The novel deals with a relationship that, despite all the skillful volition in the world, is ultimately based on the exploitation of one homo by another. Has this novel caused you to look at any situations in your own life where you may be benefiting from the labor or poverty of another?
iii. Remarking on the fact that Bhima is not allowed to sit on the furniture in Sera Dubash's dwelling house, or beverage from the same glass, it could exist said that the novel is about a kind of "Indian Apartheid." Do you retrieve that's putting information technology also strongly? If not, tin you identify whatever parallels in contemporary America?
4. The novel tracks the lives of two women. Trace some of the means in which their lives resemble each other'south. What are the points of departure?
5. Neither Sera nor Bhima finish upwards with happy, successful marriages. Why? Trace the factors that crusade each spousal relationship to fail. And for all its failings, which woman has the amend marriage?
6. Sera'southward mother-in-law, Banu, makes life miserable for the young Sera. Is Banu the kind of mother in law that many American women can identify with? Examine the ways in which she is or isn't the typical in-police.
7. The Afghani balloonwalla is a minor but pivotal grapheme in the novel. What is his role? What does he symbolize or represent?
The novel is told from the points of view of the two women, Bhima and Sera. Should it take included more than points of view? For case, should Viraf have had his ain "voice"?
8. How exercise you read the ending of the book? Is it a hopeful ending? Practise you remember the ending is justified, given what awaits Bhima the side by side day?
9. What is your opinion about Sera, especially given the pick she makes in the end. Is she a sympathetic character? Or is she part of the problem?
ten. This is a novel about the intersection of class and gender. Can y'all recollect of means in which gender bonds the two women and ways in which class divides them?
eleven. Is Gopal justified in being furious at Bhima for having signed the contract that the accountant puts before her during the cab ride to the infirmary? Would the family's fate have been different if she hadn't signed that paper?
12. Ii characters who help Bhima—Hyder, the boy in the infirmary and the Afghani balloon seller, both happen to exist Muslims. Why? What does the novel say nigh the issues of religious and communal divisions in Bharat?
13. What does this novel say about the importance of educational activity? Think of some examples where the lack of education hurts a graphic symbol and conversely, instances of where having an education benefits someone.
14. In some ways, the city of Bombay is a character in the novel. What are your impressions of Bombay after having read this novel? Does the author portray the city with affection or disdain?
15. What societal changes and/or personal choices would need to be different in guild for us to envision the possibility of someone like Bhima having a better life?
16. The writer has said that although the plot ofThe Infinite Between United states is a work of fiction, the character of Bhima is based on a woman who used to work in her home when the writer was a teenager. Is at that place any person in your ain life who has inspired you enough to want to write a book about them? What is information technology well-nigh that person that had a deep impact on you?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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