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The Space Between the Raindrops
Pablo Neruda tries to compose a poem on Isla Negra, as a man considers cheating on his parking coupon at a Maxwell Road car park. A bed thief breaks into a HDB flat every day, only to steal a few hours’ rest. Singapore is interviewed as a psychiatric patient on National Day.
Newcomer Justin Ker’s imaginative and compelling forays into the field of flash fiction carry on that tradition made so popular in the United States over the past three decades, by such luminaries as Joyce Carol Oates, Stuart Dybek, and Margaret Atwood. The possibilities in such a short, sharp form are limitless and potentially profound, and Ker reveals his deftness by providing full narratives within only a few pages. Each evanescent story inhabits the fleeting, unrepeatable place between the falling droplets on our island of rain. Perfect for a brief subway ride or the interval spent waiting for the bus, as well as that languid afternoon spent contemplating a thunderstorm, The Space Between the Raindrops is a remarkable collection of short stories told by a startling new voice.
Newcomer Justin Ker’s imaginative and compelling forays into the field of flash fiction carry on that tradition made so popular in the United States over the past three decades, by such luminaries as Joyce Carol Oates, Stuart Dybek, and Margaret Atwood. The possibilities in such a short, sharp form are limitless and potentially profound, and Ker reveals his deftness by providing full narratives within only a few pages. Each evanescent story inhabits the fleeting, unrepeatable place between the falling droplets on our island of rain. Perfect for a brief subway ride or the interval spent waiting for the bus, as well as that languid afternoon spent contemplating a thunderstorm, The Space Between the Raindrops is a remarkable collection of short stories told by a startling new voice.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
176 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2014
7 people are currently reading
885 people want to read
About the author
Justin Ker
4 books6 followersJustin Ker is a medical doctor at the National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore. He has a special interest in the injured brain and its damaged memories. His story “Joo Chiat and Other Lost Things” won second prize in the 2011 Golden Point Awards for fiction, and was anthologized in The Epigram Books Collection of Best New Singaporean Short Stories in 2013. He received the National Arts Council’s Emerging Artists Grant in 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 12, 2019
Singapurlu yazar Justin Ker’in öykülerini okurken dünya turuna çıkmış gibi oldum. Hindistan, New York, Şili, Lübyana, Bağdat, Hong Kong, Tayland, Bolivya gibi birbirinden farklı kültürlere misafir olan kısa öykülerden oluşuyor kitap.
Genelde melankolik karakterleri var öykülerin. Yanlış kadınla evli olan adam, artık bir alzheimer hastası olan kocasından gördüğü zulmü kendi lehine çeviren kadın, şiirinin sadece başlığını yazdığı kağıdı uçan şair, konuşmaktansa yazmayı seçerek iletişim kurmaya çalışan adam, ayrıldığı sevgilisinin kahkahasını arayan genç gibi ilginç karakterlerle süslü metinler.
Öykülerin çoğunda hafif yağmur yağıyor. Yağmur damlalarının düşüşünü anlatıyor. Hüzünlü karakterlerin dünyaya bakışları çok farklı. Sanki görünmez bir süzgeçten geçen anılarını süzgecin üstünde kalan zaman tortuları ile anlatmayı seçiyorlar. Detaylar çok keskin. Bu küçük ama keskin detaylar öyküleri güçlendiriyor ve adeta merkezi haline geliyor.
devamı blogta:
https://konserveruhlar.wordpress.com/...
Genelde melankolik karakterleri var öykülerin. Yanlış kadınla evli olan adam, artık bir alzheimer hastası olan kocasından gördüğü zulmü kendi lehine çeviren kadın, şiirinin sadece başlığını yazdığı kağıdı uçan şair, konuşmaktansa yazmayı seçerek iletişim kurmaya çalışan adam, ayrıldığı sevgilisinin kahkahasını arayan genç gibi ilginç karakterlerle süslü metinler.
Öykülerin çoğunda hafif yağmur yağıyor. Yağmur damlalarının düşüşünü anlatıyor. Hüzünlü karakterlerin dünyaya bakışları çok farklı. Sanki görünmez bir süzgeçten geçen anılarını süzgecin üstünde kalan zaman tortuları ile anlatmayı seçiyorlar. Detaylar çok keskin. Bu küçük ama keskin detaylar öyküleri güçlendiriyor ve adeta merkezi haline geliyor.
devamı blogta:
https://konserveruhlar.wordpress.com/...
November 3, 2021
The Space Between the Raindrops was my first encounter with Singaporean flash fiction, and I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm not usually one for collections of short stories, and I felt that this book erred on the side of pretentiousness at times with the unnecessarily dramatic language, but overall robust ideas, and a few of the stories really stood out to me (like The Bed Thief, My Country as a Psychiatric Patient, Memory, The Forgetting Shop). A solid collection of stories exploring psyche and memories, 2.5 stars.
March 2, 2015
This is a book I got through a Goodreads giveaway in exchange of an honest review.
This was a very enriching read for me because I rarely read short stories so it was different, but mostly because it was wonderfully written! After each reading session, inner peace overflowed me and it simply made me reflect on all kinds of things. The vocabulary was rich, the writing style, very enjoyable and the metaphors were great. The author has a great ease in giving life to his characters and it makes me feel as if the characters could be anyone I see on the streets; as if I were to entertain myself by inventing the background of a stranger with great detail. I enjoyed very much the deepness in the stories and also the creativity in the writing of this book. The descriptions were also a big asset of this book. Some passages can make us feel like we are in a movie and that we can feel the tension between the two characters.
The only thing that I think would bother some readers who aren't very familiar with the Singaporean culture, is the use of Singaporean slangs. However, it is not something that should keep someone from reading this remarkable book!
This was a very enriching read for me because I rarely read short stories so it was different, but mostly because it was wonderfully written! After each reading session, inner peace overflowed me and it simply made me reflect on all kinds of things. The vocabulary was rich, the writing style, very enjoyable and the metaphors were great. The author has a great ease in giving life to his characters and it makes me feel as if the characters could be anyone I see on the streets; as if I were to entertain myself by inventing the background of a stranger with great detail. I enjoyed very much the deepness in the stories and also the creativity in the writing of this book. The descriptions were also a big asset of this book. Some passages can make us feel like we are in a movie and that we can feel the tension between the two characters.
The only thing that I think would bother some readers who aren't very familiar with the Singaporean culture, is the use of Singaporean slangs. However, it is not something that should keep someone from reading this remarkable book!
January 27, 2015
Good book, not what I expected, but I liked it. Never really read anything like this before. It kept me entertained and wanting to read more.
July 4, 2022
when the stories hit right they hit hard but otherwise it's a complete miss. seems interesting at first but after a while it gets repetitive and irritating seeing heterosexual men contemplate their love lives in various pretentious ways using various pretentious words. I get it, you're sad, love is temporary, etc etc. If I have to read the word "transient" or "rain" one more time i will lose it. boy vs boy is funny but totally out of place in this collection.
July 31, 2015
The beauty of reading a book is that it manages to capture your attention (however short it is) and your imagination to evoke sentiments and thoughts from you about the stories the author is telling you. I manage to achieve this when I read Justin Ker's The Space Between the Raindrops and it is rare for me to a local writer. How I get to know about this book makes me feel like I am a potential subject of Ker's personal sensitivity, humour, reflections and observations - it was almost like I am one of his muse in his short stories.
In brief, I came across the Flash Fiction Contest 2015 organized by NLB online one day and decide to participate. Out of the 10 titles that I am supposed to use in my story, I happened to pick Ker's as his title seems to fit into my storyline very well. After my contest submission to NLB, I went to the nearest NBL branch to borrow Space Between the Raindrops for my reading pleasure. And I do like his stories so I decide to let the World Wide Web knows about it.
He writes almost about anything that he feels and think about: from love, sex, house break-ins to pseudo-linguistic subjects like Singlish. What catches my attention the most would be the story, "My Country As a Psychiatric Patient. (Patient Notes Written on the 9th August 2008). I am not sure about all his other observations but this story particularly resonates in me to want me to write this review.
Personally I would share how I feel (most pleasurable) of this story than to give a review of the entire book (which is still good btw).
Ker's usage of a psychiatric patient as an analogy to a country is innocuous but therapeutic. It is not that I suffer the same condition as the subject he wrote. It was a same diagnosis/prognosis from one doctor to another doctor.
If you are one of those rational and objective person and questions about almost everything internally before you act/decide, you are probably one of those who will seek a second professional opinion about something that you are trying to find truth. I.e. if you are told that you have lung cancer without being a smoker at Raffles Medical; you will then, after managing your shock and emotions, try to be rational and seek a second opinion from another independent professional body, say, National Lung Cancer Centre to have your condition verified.
The story is, to my interpretation, Ker's observations and personal sentiments about Singapore and after reading it, I concur that his observations are correct and his sentiments are relevant so much so that it was therapeutic for me to know that another person is able to express it better than I do. More importantly, I think we need more than writers or a diagnosis of the state of affairs in Singapore to continue to move forward. To me, those who care deep enough will do something about it, which is what I did time and again, here and everywhere.
After the diagnosis/prognosis, Ker did not provide a prescription for a mental patient but did suggest some programs for the patient to check out in order to become a complete Self - the development of a healthy psyche.
"...This development involves a process of integrating the opposite aspects of one's characteristics, to produce a singular, unified mental representation of oneself (Freud's Ego or Jung's Persona), a Self that is presented to the outside world. Without an adequately formed Self, the individual suffers from unrealized potential and the spectrum of neuroses."
Since no one can predict the future it might also be good that advance thinkers can read about Deleuze and Guattari's "Capitalism and Schizophrenia", Book 1 and 2, just to feel what destablising, de-territorializing, and schizoanalysis means - It make good anti-thesis to the complete Self theory of Freud and Jung.
In brief, I came across the Flash Fiction Contest 2015 organized by NLB online one day and decide to participate. Out of the 10 titles that I am supposed to use in my story, I happened to pick Ker's as his title seems to fit into my storyline very well. After my contest submission to NLB, I went to the nearest NBL branch to borrow Space Between the Raindrops for my reading pleasure. And I do like his stories so I decide to let the World Wide Web knows about it.
He writes almost about anything that he feels and think about: from love, sex, house break-ins to pseudo-linguistic subjects like Singlish. What catches my attention the most would be the story, "My Country As a Psychiatric Patient. (Patient Notes Written on the 9th August 2008). I am not sure about all his other observations but this story particularly resonates in me to want me to write this review.
Personally I would share how I feel (most pleasurable) of this story than to give a review of the entire book (which is still good btw).
Ker's usage of a psychiatric patient as an analogy to a country is innocuous but therapeutic. It is not that I suffer the same condition as the subject he wrote. It was a same diagnosis/prognosis from one doctor to another doctor.
If you are one of those rational and objective person and questions about almost everything internally before you act/decide, you are probably one of those who will seek a second professional opinion about something that you are trying to find truth. I.e. if you are told that you have lung cancer without being a smoker at Raffles Medical; you will then, after managing your shock and emotions, try to be rational and seek a second opinion from another independent professional body, say, National Lung Cancer Centre to have your condition verified.
The story is, to my interpretation, Ker's observations and personal sentiments about Singapore and after reading it, I concur that his observations are correct and his sentiments are relevant so much so that it was therapeutic for me to know that another person is able to express it better than I do. More importantly, I think we need more than writers or a diagnosis of the state of affairs in Singapore to continue to move forward. To me, those who care deep enough will do something about it, which is what I did time and again, here and everywhere.
After the diagnosis/prognosis, Ker did not provide a prescription for a mental patient but did suggest some programs for the patient to check out in order to become a complete Self - the development of a healthy psyche.
"...This development involves a process of integrating the opposite aspects of one's characteristics, to produce a singular, unified mental representation of oneself (Freud's Ego or Jung's Persona), a Self that is presented to the outside world. Without an adequately formed Self, the individual suffers from unrealized potential and the spectrum of neuroses."
Since no one can predict the future it might also be good that advance thinkers can read about Deleuze and Guattari's "Capitalism and Schizophrenia", Book 1 and 2, just to feel what destablising, de-territorializing, and schizoanalysis means - It make good anti-thesis to the complete Self theory of Freud and Jung.
March 11, 2015
Another beautiful collection of short stories by a Singapore writer by Epigram. Some of them seemed connected, and yet they are not -- are the lovers in different stories the same, or are our experiences are all so similar?
The author works in neuroscience and his fascination of the brain and memory is evident in many of his stories. A little disturbing, perhaps, but beautiful overall. Just two examples from the micro fiction in 'A Diptych', the last story in the collection:
'Unfortunately, one of the features that the human animal has evolved over fifty thousand years is the ability to hold memories.'
'The visual of the memory will also be eventually and inevitably lost, because the evolution of memory does not guarantee its preservation.'
The author works in neuroscience and his fascination of the brain and memory is evident in many of his stories. A little disturbing, perhaps, but beautiful overall. Just two examples from the micro fiction in 'A Diptych', the last story in the collection:
'Unfortunately, one of the features that the human animal has evolved over fifty thousand years is the ability to hold memories.'
'The visual of the memory will also be eventually and inevitably lost, because the evolution of memory does not guarantee its preservation.'
October 29, 2014
The stories in Justin Ker’s The Space Between the Raindrops deftly capture and unravel both the off-kilter and the meditative. In “Portrait of a Girl, Reading,” a revelation is teased out of a completely forgettable sight involving a girl reading a novel at the back of a bus. The intriguing and delightfully absurd “The Bed Thief” raises the specter of alienation, while “Julia Sets” echoes longing. Ker’s stories are robust and keen. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
January 12, 2016
I liked the stories in the beginning, but after a while they began to grate on me and it was a chore to read the last few stories within the book. They're not badly written by any stretch and I can see young readers taking to it, but it's not exactly my cup of tea.
If you're a Bukowski, Hemingway, Salter kind of person, you probably won't like this.
If you're a Bukowski, Hemingway, Salter kind of person, you probably won't like this.
November 27, 2014
FINALLY. A collection of stories that doesn't do that annoying self-conscious navel gazing typical of Singaporean writers.
Looking forward to a new collection soon?
And yes I am sure this one gets a sniff at the Singapore Literature Prize next year?
Looking forward to a new collection soon?
And yes I am sure this one gets a sniff at the Singapore Literature Prize next year?
November 27, 2014
After a few stories... gets a bit bored with the style of writing.
November 5, 2021
beautiful nothingness. i enjoyed reading it but i barely remember anything.
December 5, 2017
I am not a short story fan which maybe why only 4 of the 42 stories were standouts for me (Three Ways of Talking, A song, & The House That She Built), with another couple noteworthy(The Island of Amnesia, Boy vs Boy & My Country as a Psychiatric Patient). The rest I found inconsequential and empty. Ker often uses unnecessarily complex or elaborate words, that I found a little jarring given the structure of the majority his sentences.
Eg: “The transparent liquid inside had a cerulean hue along its meniscus” and
“... except through the summative refractive error of sake”...(p62-63) and
“As the water ran down his œsophagus...”.
I felt Ker was trying too hard to impress his audience and the use of such language seemed at odds with the flow of the language as a whole.
Eg: “The transparent liquid inside had a cerulean hue along its meniscus” and
“... except through the summative refractive error of sake”...(p62-63) and
“As the water ran down his œsophagus...”.
I felt Ker was trying too hard to impress his audience and the use of such language seemed at odds with the flow of the language as a whole.
January 31, 2018
Bizarre, insightful, weird, and thought provoking. I liked the quirky stories about things in this world that we often do not ponder....an old man looking at a young girl on the bus and imagining her future, the way our bones absorb all that we have done, the meeting of strangers on a boat, a dying patient exhaling his happiness as his doctor tries to inhale his pain...many things to ponder. And yet, some stories like the one about idols being thrown into the ocean made no sense to me. I thought I was going to zip through this 162 page book and instead I found myself stopping and thinking about the short story I just read and often reread it.
June 17, 2017
I had never heard of "flash fiction" before this book. It is short stories that are very short - like 1 to 3 pages. Very easy to fly through them. Usually, when a short story ends, I have a lot of thoughts about what might be next. With these ultra shorts flying by, it is easy meld them together, since there are a lot of recurring themes. More like 3.5 than a 4, but the last time I gave a 3 to a 3.5, so now we are even!
March 25, 2020
Her bir hikayeden sonra kendi düşüncelerimi kontrol etmek zorunda hissettim, yoksa beni alıp götürdüğü yerlerin bir sınırı yoktu.
Fakat peşpeşe okumak insanı çok yoruyor, baş ucunda tutup uzun uzun, düşüncelerle birlikte tadını çıkararak okumak daha keyifli olur.
Fakat peşpeşe okumak insanı çok yoruyor, baş ucunda tutup uzun uzun, düşüncelerle birlikte tadını çıkararak okumak daha keyifli olur.
June 24, 2019
Beautiful use of language.
November 5, 2020
This book creates bridges between thoughts and desires that you’re not even aware of carrying. Enriching.
October 6, 2021
brilliant. one of the top ten reasons to read singlit. boy vs boy = peak humour
June 28, 2017
Curiosity level: Realism and philosophical fiction
Irreversibly attracted to the mystery of the human brain and its selective/elusive memories, author and medical doctor Justin Ker explores the myriad of possibilities that never ceases to turn, like a Ferris wheel, in one's mind!
His stories squeeze us into parallel universes or alternate possibilities because the brain is a very powerful thing. It plays tricks on you. It teases you. It laughs at you. It changes how you remember things. So many ways the brain works, and Justin's is one of the exciting ways we can start to see things...
In "The House that She Built", a Wife acts as both housewife and narrator... her husband, who has severe dementia, is subject to the daily canvas of her creativity... Everyday, what stories does she tell him ? In his debut book, see through a series of memory stones, darkly or brightly !
"He understands that he can never leave the memory of her laughter, it will be something that leaves him." -p.126
"His thoughts suddenly lost all their metaphors and life became a lot more concrete." - p.5
Irreversibly attracted to the mystery of the human brain and its selective/elusive memories, author and medical doctor Justin Ker explores the myriad of possibilities that never ceases to turn, like a Ferris wheel, in one's mind!
His stories squeeze us into parallel universes or alternate possibilities because the brain is a very powerful thing. It plays tricks on you. It teases you. It laughs at you. It changes how you remember things. So many ways the brain works, and Justin's is one of the exciting ways we can start to see things...
In "The House that She Built", a Wife acts as both housewife and narrator... her husband, who has severe dementia, is subject to the daily canvas of her creativity... Everyday, what stories does she tell him ? In his debut book, see through a series of memory stones, darkly or brightly !
"He understands that he can never leave the memory of her laughter, it will be something that leaves him." -p.126
"His thoughts suddenly lost all their metaphors and life became a lot more concrete." - p.5
April 9, 2017
Good flash fiction stories which cut across love, humor, despair and a myriad of feelings.
April 2, 2019
Justin Ker’s compilation of flash fictions offer startling glimpses into the contemporary urban lives of his characters. Personally, the freshness of Ker’s authorial voice was most impactful in his first piece, but its effect gradually faded in the subsequent pieces.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews