The Space Between Us

Each morning, Bhima, a domestic servant in contemporary Bombay, leaves her own small shanty in the slums to tend to another woman's house. In Sera Dubash's home, Bhima scrubs the floors of a house in which she remains an outsider. She cleans furniture she is not permitted to sit on. She washes glasses from which she is not allowed to drink. Yet despite being separated from each other by blood and class, she and Sera find themselves bound by gender and shared life experiences.

Sera is an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife whose opulent surroundings hide the shame and disappointment of her abusive marriage. 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 charming 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 twenty years. Cursed by fate, she sacrifices all for her beautiful, headstrong granddaughter, Maya, a university student 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's 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 Us is an intimate portrait of a distant yet familiar world. Set in modern-day India and witnessed through two 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 captures how the bonds of womanhood are pitted against the divisions of class and culture.

"Umrigar's schematic novel (after Bombay Time) illustrates the intimacy, and the irreconcilable class divide, between two women in contemporary Bombay. Bhima, a 65-year-old slum dweller, has worked for Sera Dubash, a younger upper-middle-class Parsi woman, for years: cooking, cleaning and tending Sera after the beatings she endures from her abusive husband, Feroz. Sera, in turn, nurses Bhima back to health from typhoid fever and sends her granddaughter Maya to college. Sera recognizes their affinity: 'They were alike 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 pain of watching the bloom fade from their marriages.' But Sera's affection for her servant wars with ingrained prejudice against lower castes. The younger generation — Maya; Sera's daughter, Dinaz, and son-in-law, Viraf — are also caged by the same strictures despite efforts to throw them off. In a final plot twist, class allegiance combined with gender inequality challenges personal connection, and Bhima may pay a bitter price for her loyalty to her employers. At times, Umrigar's writing achieves clarity, but a narrative that unfolds in retrospect saps the book's momentum." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Artists know very well that a good way to depict overwhelming social problems is to tell the story of an individual who represents many others....Umrigar is a skilled storyteller, and her memorable characters will live on for a long time." Washington Post

"Part of what makes The Space Between Us so engrossing is its ability to make readers feel empathy for its subjects." San Francisco Chronicle

"Examines the class divide in Bombay...through the relationship of a mistress and her servant....Umrigar is a perceptive and often piercing writer." New York Times

"[A] ruminative novel, told from inside the heads of these close-but-distant women....Umrigar is at her best...conveying the small moments that sustain or degrade the minuet of intimacy." Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Sadness suffuses this eloquent tale, whose heart-stopping plot twists reveal the ferocity of fate." Booklist

"Journalist Umrigar evocatively describes daily life in two very different households in modern-day Bombay....[She] beautifully and movingly wends her way through the complexities and subtleties of these unequal but caring relationships." Library Journal

"With humanity and suspense, novelist Thrity Umrigar tackles love, loyalty, injustice — and survival." Marie Claire

"Umrigar is a perceptive and often piercing writer....Her portrait of Sera as a woman unable to transcend her middle-class skin feels bracingly honest." New York Times Book Review

"Poignant." Entertainment Weekly

Devastating in its power, here is a searing novel that vividly captures the delicate balance of class and gender in contemporary India, as witnessed through the lives of an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife and her stoic, illiterate domestic worker.

Umrigar grew up in Bombay, India. A recipient of the prestigious Neiman Fellowship, she writes for the Beacon Journal in Akron, and is a contributor to the Boston Globe and The Washington Post.