"The Space Between Us" By Thrity Umrigar

Last week I finished reading (crap, I'm a grown up and I still can't remember if i should underline, italicize or put in quotation marks the title of a book...so I'll do a little of all three) "The Space Between Us" (crap again, I don't know how to underline things) by Thrity Umrigar. I got an advance copy so you can't run out and buy it. But when it is in stores I think you should check it out.

The book tells the story of Bhima and Sera and their respective lives in Bombay. Sera is a Parsi and has lived a life of relative luxury compared to her servant Bhima. Bhima has lived through an initially happy marriage gone sour, an orphaned grandchild and, when the book opens, that same grandchild pregnant at seventeen. Sera, too, has had struggles...her married life may have been one of economic comfort but it came at a price. It is through the pregnancy of Bhima's granddaughter Maya, that the ways in which the caste system of India irrevocably determine a person's (though I think the message in this book is more specifically about women's) fate are shown. The language is rather beautiful in places. The story is simple and not entirely new and yet there are little moments that are truly unexpected.

The pace of this book is pretty good, opening with the pregnancy and ending with the reader learning who fathered the child. It is through flashbacks that you learn what has shaped both Sera and Bhima's worlds. You witness the strange intimacy between employer and employee, and yet you are kept well aware of the fine line between their relationship and a friendship, for they are not one and the same.

The End.