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Between
Vero and her husband, Shane, have moved out of the sweet suite above his parents' garage and found themselves smack in the middle of adulthood - two kids, two cars, two jobs. They are not coping well. In response to their looming domestic breakdown, Vero and Shane get live-in help with their sons - a woman from the Philippines named Ligaya (which means "happiness"); the children call her LiLi.
Vero justifies LiLi's role in their home by insisting that she is part of their family, and she goes to great lengths in order to ease her conscience. But differences persist; Vero grapples with her overextended role as a mother and struggles to keep her marriage passionate while LiLi silently bears the burden of a secret she left behind at home.
Vero justifies LiLi's role in their home by insisting that she is part of their family, and she goes to great lengths in order to ease her conscience. But differences persist; Vero grapples with her overextended role as a mother and struggles to keep her marriage passionate while LiLi silently bears the burden of a secret she left behind at home.
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First published October 1, 2014
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About the author
Angie Abdou
15 books112 followersAngie Abdou was born and raised in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. She received an Honours B.A. in English from the University of Regina, an M.A. from the University of Western Ontario, and a Ph.D. from the University of Calgary. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Athabasca University. She makes her home in the Canadian Rockies along the BC/Alberta border with her two children. She has published eight books: a short story collection, four novels, a collection of essays, and two memoirs. Her first novel, The Bone Cage, was a finalist for Canada Reads 2011. The Canterbury Trail was a finalist for Banff Mountain Book of the Year and won a 2012 IPPY, Gold Medal for Canada West. In Case I Go was a finalist for a Banff Mountain Book Award in the fiction and poetry category and Chatelaine magazine called it one of the most rivetting mysteries of 2017. Her memoir, Home Ice, recieved a starred review in Booklist, which called it "a first-rate memoir and a fine example of narrative nonfiction [and] also a must-read for parents with youngsters who play organized sports."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
August 5, 2014
Whoa... I did not see where this story was going at all. It was very Desperate Housewives at first, and then suddenly got real dark and dirty! The other thing that struck me is how Abdou *makes* the reader judge these characters, while making you see you're not so different. I love that this mom gives zero shits about what other moms are doing, or parenting styles, or anything you read about in the "mommy wars" articles. The real war is against time, and aging, and your partner, and if I want to get real cliche about it, yourself. I'll try to write this up better in my full review!
April 6, 2017
Angie Abdou is a deceptive writer. On the surface, her novel might be thought of a domestic drama, a novel of sexual frustration, marital disappointment, the stresses of childrearing and finding the right nanny, but such a reading would miss the political, cultural, and economic subtexts. Her language is lovely, and she uses wonderful, earthy, enfleshed imagery. She's also very funny!
Here's what the review from the Winnipeg Free Press had to say. I couldn't say it better myself:
"Reviewed by Julienne Isaacs
Angie Abdou is a boundary-pusher. Whether it’s emotional pain or physical exertion, she brings her characters to the limits of human endurance. 2006’s Anything Boys Can Do, a collection of short stories, explores female sexual politics. Her first novel, The Bone Cage, a finalist in CBC’s 2011 Canada Reads, is the story of two athletes training for the Olympics. The Canterbury Trail (2011) follows a troupe of skiers journeying up and over a mountain.
Between is a natural follow-up to all of these themes, and one way or another, it tackles them all again: sex, politics, athleticism, even mountains, if you can count entitlement, consumerism and cultural barriers as metaphorical mountains.
Vero and her husband Shane are average middle-class Canadians: she’s an editor for a vehicle manufacturing company, he’s a pharmacist. They live in a large home in middle-class mountainous Canada with their two children, two cars and too many bicycles, which Shane rides compulsively. All seems normal on the outside—but Vero is on the breaking point, overwhelmed by the challenges of balancing career and motherhood, her sense of personal worth almost smothered into nonexistence. In an attempt to save their disintegrating marriage, and Vero’s sanity, they hire a nanny—a Filipino woman named Ligaya—who carries secret burdens of her own.
The potential political pitfalls lining Between’s pages should already be clear. Middle-class Canadian couple struggles to embody middle-class Canadian ideal, hires third-world import to do the dirty work while they attempt to revitalize their marriage might be the novel’s subtitle—and at first glance Between seems to be granting legitimacy to this highly problematic crisis.
But Abdou is shrewd: while Vero and Shane’s (hashtag) First World Problems are readily apparent, they cannot be written off, for Abdou attends to them with an intense emotional realism. And no attitudes in Between are easy to summarize or critique—let alone condemn or defend. Everything is simply laid bare to the reader: Ligaya’s loneliness and culture shock, Vero’s depression, Shane’s helplessness. And the overarching consumerist philosophy that unites all three—if I had this my life would be fixed—makes them makes them familiar to readers also struggling with consumerism.
Vero, pre-nanny, is a hot mess. Some of Between’s edgiest passages, emotionally speaking, can be found near the beginning of the novel, as Vero folds laundry, cleans up after her three-year-old, Eliot, and baby, Jamal, and tries to remember why her life matters at all. At the limit of her energy, she retreats to a closet with two bottles of wine and sits in the darkness, leaving voicemail messages for her friend:
She thinks of saying, I’m drunk on the pantry floor. “Parenting’s hard,” she says instead, her tongue slow and heavy. “Whatever made us do it? I mean, really, imagine trying to sell this experience to someone, if we hadn’t all bought it already. Here’s the pitch: You’ll get pregnant. Your body will warp in ways you hadn’t thought possible. It’ll never be the same again. You’ll pee your pants for months afterward, maybe forever. Delivering a baby will hurt until you think you’ll die. You’ll wish for death …”
Ligaya—or LiLi, as the family renames her—isn’t the ideal solution Vero and Shane have hoped for: granted, she keeps everything perfectly clean and the children tidied away, and puts food on the table. But she resists Vero’s efforts to befriend her, to get close to her. To put it another way, a part of Ligaya refuses colonization. Vero can see grief close under Ligaya’s efficient surface, but when entrance to it is denied, Vero lapses into daydreams of an idealized friendship: “They could talk about loneliness, not like sisters, maybe, but like friends. Even good friends. LiLi would admit, Yes, yes, I am lonely. Vero imagines them having this conversation cross-legged on LiLi’s single bed, under the posters that LiLi has never taken down.”
Ligaya’s personal struggles are revealed, in slim occasional chapters, in their own right. And she is, indeed, lonely. When Vero and Shane go away on holiday—part of the marriage-revitalization project—she takes the boys into her bed so she can fall asleep close to their warmth: “They are good boys, these two. She puts her nose close to Eliot’s hair and lets the scent of baby shampoo carry her to sleep. It is a luxury, she knows, an indulgence. But she takes it.”
Vero’s white-washed, polite Canadian complicity in a culturally-acceptable system of social hierarchy, is a dark spot staining her conscience that Ligaya prevents her from eradicating through friendship.
But the chief crisis in Between comes when Vero and Shane escape their everyday reality for a fantasy vacation to a Jamaican swinger’s resort. Their resulting, slow-but-steady forays into sexual hedonism mark the novel’s most disturbing passages.
It’s a cliché of literary fiction that writing detailed sex scenes is dangerous and can put the writer at risk of receiving some Bad Sex Writing award or other, but Abdou ignores it. And her fearlessness grants the writing a kinetic power—as when Vero, on Shane’s urging, hooks up with a stranger in a public pool at the resort, before all eyes. But the brief resulting satisfaction—as much performance as pleasure—sends Vero spiraling: “when her body stops waving and spinning, she slides into the water, wanting to go right under, to sit at the bottom with her nose plugged and her eyes clenched tight. Looking at anyone now would be to own what has just happened. She would rather disappear.” Complete sexual satiety is the final frontier in Vero and Shane’s quest for a complete life: but it cannot be purchased without a cost.
Part of Abdou’s achievement in Between is in her avoidance of the terms “transaction,” “consumption” and “entitlement,” when these are driving themes behind nearly every page. To Vero and Shane, and even, to a certain degree, Ligaya, everything can be purchased if the purchaser has enough capital. Every pleasure is deserved. And everyone, whether or not they are in a position to seize it, is entitled to every pleasure. The consequences of seizing it, however, go deep: deeper than a resort pool, as deep as an ocean—maybe deeper.
Between’s descriptive passages are beautifully evoked, magnetic, even hypnotic. And Abdou pulls no punches: she does not avoid the difficult. She plunges right in. While its conclusion pushes too hard for resolution that is unlikely—or even impossible—Between remains complex to its final pages. Interpersonal tensions, for Abdou, are mountain ranges dividing people. Whether or not we can scale the heights depends on more than tenacity—more than empathy, even. It depends on our ability to truly see the other as more than a site of exchange."
Here's what the review from the Winnipeg Free Press had to say. I couldn't say it better myself:
"Reviewed by Julienne Isaacs
Angie Abdou is a boundary-pusher. Whether it’s emotional pain or physical exertion, she brings her characters to the limits of human endurance. 2006’s Anything Boys Can Do, a collection of short stories, explores female sexual politics. Her first novel, The Bone Cage, a finalist in CBC’s 2011 Canada Reads, is the story of two athletes training for the Olympics. The Canterbury Trail (2011) follows a troupe of skiers journeying up and over a mountain.
Between is a natural follow-up to all of these themes, and one way or another, it tackles them all again: sex, politics, athleticism, even mountains, if you can count entitlement, consumerism and cultural barriers as metaphorical mountains.
Vero and her husband Shane are average middle-class Canadians: she’s an editor for a vehicle manufacturing company, he’s a pharmacist. They live in a large home in middle-class mountainous Canada with their two children, two cars and too many bicycles, which Shane rides compulsively. All seems normal on the outside—but Vero is on the breaking point, overwhelmed by the challenges of balancing career and motherhood, her sense of personal worth almost smothered into nonexistence. In an attempt to save their disintegrating marriage, and Vero’s sanity, they hire a nanny—a Filipino woman named Ligaya—who carries secret burdens of her own.
The potential political pitfalls lining Between’s pages should already be clear. Middle-class Canadian couple struggles to embody middle-class Canadian ideal, hires third-world import to do the dirty work while they attempt to revitalize their marriage might be the novel’s subtitle—and at first glance Between seems to be granting legitimacy to this highly problematic crisis.
But Abdou is shrewd: while Vero and Shane’s (hashtag) First World Problems are readily apparent, they cannot be written off, for Abdou attends to them with an intense emotional realism. And no attitudes in Between are easy to summarize or critique—let alone condemn or defend. Everything is simply laid bare to the reader: Ligaya’s loneliness and culture shock, Vero’s depression, Shane’s helplessness. And the overarching consumerist philosophy that unites all three—if I had this my life would be fixed—makes them makes them familiar to readers also struggling with consumerism.
Vero, pre-nanny, is a hot mess. Some of Between’s edgiest passages, emotionally speaking, can be found near the beginning of the novel, as Vero folds laundry, cleans up after her three-year-old, Eliot, and baby, Jamal, and tries to remember why her life matters at all. At the limit of her energy, she retreats to a closet with two bottles of wine and sits in the darkness, leaving voicemail messages for her friend:
She thinks of saying, I’m drunk on the pantry floor. “Parenting’s hard,” she says instead, her tongue slow and heavy. “Whatever made us do it? I mean, really, imagine trying to sell this experience to someone, if we hadn’t all bought it already. Here’s the pitch: You’ll get pregnant. Your body will warp in ways you hadn’t thought possible. It’ll never be the same again. You’ll pee your pants for months afterward, maybe forever. Delivering a baby will hurt until you think you’ll die. You’ll wish for death …”
Ligaya—or LiLi, as the family renames her—isn’t the ideal solution Vero and Shane have hoped for: granted, she keeps everything perfectly clean and the children tidied away, and puts food on the table. But she resists Vero’s efforts to befriend her, to get close to her. To put it another way, a part of Ligaya refuses colonization. Vero can see grief close under Ligaya’s efficient surface, but when entrance to it is denied, Vero lapses into daydreams of an idealized friendship: “They could talk about loneliness, not like sisters, maybe, but like friends. Even good friends. LiLi would admit, Yes, yes, I am lonely. Vero imagines them having this conversation cross-legged on LiLi’s single bed, under the posters that LiLi has never taken down.”
Ligaya’s personal struggles are revealed, in slim occasional chapters, in their own right. And she is, indeed, lonely. When Vero and Shane go away on holiday—part of the marriage-revitalization project—she takes the boys into her bed so she can fall asleep close to their warmth: “They are good boys, these two. She puts her nose close to Eliot’s hair and lets the scent of baby shampoo carry her to sleep. It is a luxury, she knows, an indulgence. But she takes it.”
Vero’s white-washed, polite Canadian complicity in a culturally-acceptable system of social hierarchy, is a dark spot staining her conscience that Ligaya prevents her from eradicating through friendship.
But the chief crisis in Between comes when Vero and Shane escape their everyday reality for a fantasy vacation to a Jamaican swinger’s resort. Their resulting, slow-but-steady forays into sexual hedonism mark the novel’s most disturbing passages.
It’s a cliché of literary fiction that writing detailed sex scenes is dangerous and can put the writer at risk of receiving some Bad Sex Writing award or other, but Abdou ignores it. And her fearlessness grants the writing a kinetic power—as when Vero, on Shane’s urging, hooks up with a stranger in a public pool at the resort, before all eyes. But the brief resulting satisfaction—as much performance as pleasure—sends Vero spiraling: “when her body stops waving and spinning, she slides into the water, wanting to go right under, to sit at the bottom with her nose plugged and her eyes clenched tight. Looking at anyone now would be to own what has just happened. She would rather disappear.” Complete sexual satiety is the final frontier in Vero and Shane’s quest for a complete life: but it cannot be purchased without a cost.
Part of Abdou’s achievement in Between is in her avoidance of the terms “transaction,” “consumption” and “entitlement,” when these are driving themes behind nearly every page. To Vero and Shane, and even, to a certain degree, Ligaya, everything can be purchased if the purchaser has enough capital. Every pleasure is deserved. And everyone, whether or not they are in a position to seize it, is entitled to every pleasure. The consequences of seizing it, however, go deep: deeper than a resort pool, as deep as an ocean—maybe deeper.
Between’s descriptive passages are beautifully evoked, magnetic, even hypnotic. And Abdou pulls no punches: she does not avoid the difficult. She plunges right in. While its conclusion pushes too hard for resolution that is unlikely—or even impossible—Between remains complex to its final pages. Interpersonal tensions, for Abdou, are mountain ranges dividing people. Whether or not we can scale the heights depends on more than tenacity—more than empathy, even. It depends on our ability to truly see the other as more than a site of exchange."
October 2, 2014
Very, very impressed by this book. Angie Abdou tackles depression, parenthood, motherhood and Filipina nannies in this book. She gives us the perspective of both the North American mother/employer and the Filipina nanny, which makes this book balanced and unique. The plot was unexpected and twisted and turned. I spent two weeks in the Philippines on a study tour to take a bunch of Canadian farmers to meet Filipino farmers. We spent a lot of time talking to Filipinos in their homes and I've been very interested in the culture and the people ever since. I'm not Filipino, but I feel that Abdou captured some of the cultural realities of the Philippines in this book.
Nice work.
Side note- When reading part of this book, I ran out of the bedroom and yelled to my boyfriend, "My book has gone crazy." That's how little I expected the plot twist.
I agree with all the writers who say this book is gutsy and brave.
Nice work.
Side note- When reading part of this book, I ran out of the bedroom and yelled to my boyfriend, "My book has gone crazy." That's how little I expected the plot twist.
I agree with all the writers who say this book is gutsy and brave.
June 23, 2014
For mothers of young children in particular, the novel BETWEEN by Angie Abdou is an exhilarating, validating and emotional read. Abdou powerfully dives into the mind and body of an exhausted mother as she grapples with the limitations facing her.
The nanny who is hired to improve the main character’s life brings reprieve, but also the pain of leaving her own family behind. The tale of these two women as they try to navigate the complexities of their situation, and the husband caught in the middle of it all, is captivating and rich.
(This review was based on an Advanced Reading Copy supplied by the publisher, Arsenal Pulp Press)
The nanny who is hired to improve the main character’s life brings reprieve, but also the pain of leaving her own family behind. The tale of these two women as they try to navigate the complexities of their situation, and the husband caught in the middle of it all, is captivating and rich.
(This review was based on an Advanced Reading Copy supplied by the publisher, Arsenal Pulp Press)
June 17, 2014
Thank you to Arsenal Pulp Press for sending me an advance copy of this book.
The ability of a writer to craft a story showing the ills of a society around themselves is a fantastic gift to have. Angie Abdou is one such writer. She has crafted many a good book illuminating many feelings, issues and concerns in our society, using a great combination of serious prose and humour. Many of her fans have been patiently waiting for her novel Between for some time now and they will not be disappointed.
http://wp.me/p46Ewj-Gk
The ability of a writer to craft a story showing the ills of a society around themselves is a fantastic gift to have. Angie Abdou is one such writer. She has crafted many a good book illuminating many feelings, issues and concerns in our society, using a great combination of serious prose and humour. Many of her fans have been patiently waiting for her novel Between for some time now and they will not be disappointed.
http://wp.me/p46Ewj-Gk
June 18, 2014
A gutsy and intriguing look at the lives of two women -- a nanny and her employer -- who find themselves grappling with the constraints of their lives.
A compelling, character-rich story.
[ Review based on an Advance Reading Copy supplied by the publisher, Arsenal Pulp Press ]
A compelling, character-rich story.
[ Review based on an Advance Reading Copy supplied by the publisher, Arsenal Pulp Press ]
July 13, 2018
What a little gem of a novel. It is multilayered, and shows the struggle of an upper class woman (Vero) trying to do it all, battling with her own inner insecurities, trying to be the best she can be. Her husband convinces her to bring in a full time nanny. There are multiple layers within this story, looking at this situation from both Vero"s and Legaya (the live in nanny)'s point of view.
April 18, 2016
I usually don't rate books I whipped through in 2 days so poorly, but I was so disappointed with this book.
What is described as an exploration of two characters really ends up as an analysis of one: Vera, the upper-middle-class white woman with liberal guilt over hiring a Philipino nanny. Abdou's characterization of Lingaya is dismally thin, with what we know about "the nanny" serving only to show us the limits of Vera's understanding. In oyher words, she only exists to uncover Vera.
Not only was I disappointed in how the novel uses a racialized woman to explain the white woman, but the story line itself is also flimsy - basically, I didn't buy it.
What is described as an exploration of two characters really ends up as an analysis of one: Vera, the upper-middle-class white woman with liberal guilt over hiring a Philipino nanny. Abdou's characterization of Lingaya is dismally thin, with what we know about "the nanny" serving only to show us the limits of Vera's understanding. In oyher words, she only exists to uncover Vera.
Not only was I disappointed in how the novel uses a racialized woman to explain the white woman, but the story line itself is also flimsy - basically, I didn't buy it.
December 30, 2014
I particularly enjoyed the perspective of the Philipino nanny living in a Canadian home. Her story was more compelling to me than that of the protagonist, a Canadian professional woman and mom, who is unhappy in her work and marriage. It is a bleak story but it felt believable; that a woman who seems to have so much is left so dissatisfied by it.
July 7, 2015
Captivating voice and a very fast read. I enjoyed the way the story slowly unfolded releasing secrets and heartbreak. I found Vero as a character self indulgent, irresponsible and often annoying which I think, was intentional. I would have welcomed more from LiLi's perspective
October 25, 2014
My favourite Angie Abdou book...so far.
Read
August 28, 2014Watch for my review in The Winnipeg Review online.
June 25, 2017
2.5 stars. I try to avoid spoilers in my reviews but this time I'm finding it necessary to explain what I didn't like about this novel. The first few Paras are spoiler-free and the spoiler is advertised.
I quite enjoyed Between through the first half of the book. The setup of the two viewpoint characters, who you know will be connecting before long, is well done. Ligaya is a Filipina looking for a better life in Canada by way of being a nanny starting in Hong Kong. Velo is a woman suffering from post-partum depression, wife of a domineering pharmacist, reluctant mother of two boys, and unfulfilled at work. While Ligaya is quietly self-controlled, determined, and single-pointed in achieving her goals, Velo is quietly aimless, easily pushed around, and utterly unsure of what she wants or where she wants to go in life.
It seems to me that the author had thought out her characters well, and had an eye on the grand crisis of the novel, but didn't really know what to do with the crisis once it had happened. The build up is slow and meandering. The denouement by contrast, is rushed and the ending altogether abrupt.
While Ligaya's character continues to evolve as she learns how to deal with her new life in Canada, and as we learn her secret, Velo continues to flounder and her view-point chapters become somewhat tedious. You just want her to put her foot down, just once. My sympathy for Velo withered and died as the novel progressed. At least I kept hoping for good things for Ligaya. However, her sudden change in personality after the novel's crisis felt forced and
**SPOILER FROM HERE TO END OF REVIEW**
Velo's husband Shane, in yet another attempt to wake his wife from her depression, and in his dominant way, cajoles Velo into a week's holiday at a swingers resort. Velo consents, but her acquiescence is tinged with discomfort throughout the week of utter debauchery. She is uncomfortable, and the reader is definitely uncomfortable at all the reluctant sex women are having to please their husbands. On returning home, things turn from bad to worse heading to the one time in the novel that Velo actually chooses to do something, and it's a really, really bad idea. Velo, echoing her husband's dominance, abuses her position as employer to seduce the vulnerable live-in nanny, Ligaya. Now the reader is VERY uncomfortable.
Having gotten to this point, the author flounders. While Velo and Shane are falling apart, Ligaya suddenly takes charge and in an abrupt reversal of roles, tells her employers how they will all proceed from here.
But the sudden shift in Ligaya's personality, from keeping her head down and enduring what she must, to suddenly taking charge of everyone and saving the day, is too abrupt and feels out of character. The novel ends here, except for a quick glimpse of Ligaya many months later. The reader is not given any sense of what the 'new world order' of the household is - Velo is dropped completely. We never get to adjust to Ligaya's new-found authority, so it doesn't feel real. As a reader I felt abandoned by the author. I needed a denouement that allowed me to recover from the shock of the climax, but it wasn't there.
I quite enjoyed Between through the first half of the book. The setup of the two viewpoint characters, who you know will be connecting before long, is well done. Ligaya is a Filipina looking for a better life in Canada by way of being a nanny starting in Hong Kong. Velo is a woman suffering from post-partum depression, wife of a domineering pharmacist, reluctant mother of two boys, and unfulfilled at work. While Ligaya is quietly self-controlled, determined, and single-pointed in achieving her goals, Velo is quietly aimless, easily pushed around, and utterly unsure of what she wants or where she wants to go in life.
It seems to me that the author had thought out her characters well, and had an eye on the grand crisis of the novel, but didn't really know what to do with the crisis once it had happened. The build up is slow and meandering. The denouement by contrast, is rushed and the ending altogether abrupt.
While Ligaya's character continues to evolve as she learns how to deal with her new life in Canada, and as we learn her secret, Velo continues to flounder and her view-point chapters become somewhat tedious. You just want her to put her foot down, just once. My sympathy for Velo withered and died as the novel progressed. At least I kept hoping for good things for Ligaya. However, her sudden change in personality after the novel's crisis felt forced and
**SPOILER FROM HERE TO END OF REVIEW**
Velo's husband Shane, in yet another attempt to wake his wife from her depression, and in his dominant way, cajoles Velo into a week's holiday at a swingers resort. Velo consents, but her acquiescence is tinged with discomfort throughout the week of utter debauchery. She is uncomfortable, and the reader is definitely uncomfortable at all the reluctant sex women are having to please their husbands. On returning home, things turn from bad to worse heading to the one time in the novel that Velo actually chooses to do something, and it's a really, really bad idea. Velo, echoing her husband's dominance, abuses her position as employer to seduce the vulnerable live-in nanny, Ligaya. Now the reader is VERY uncomfortable.
Having gotten to this point, the author flounders. While Velo and Shane are falling apart, Ligaya suddenly takes charge and in an abrupt reversal of roles, tells her employers how they will all proceed from here.
But the sudden shift in Ligaya's personality, from keeping her head down and enduring what she must, to suddenly taking charge of everyone and saving the day, is too abrupt and feels out of character. The novel ends here, except for a quick glimpse of Ligaya many months later. The reader is not given any sense of what the 'new world order' of the household is - Velo is dropped completely. We never get to adjust to Ligaya's new-found authority, so it doesn't feel real. As a reader I felt abandoned by the author. I needed a denouement that allowed me to recover from the shock of the climax, but it wasn't there.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 26, 2025
At first I was connecting. I was getting it. And then… I wasn’t. This book actually gave me anxiety. I felt panicked reading it. It depicts how complicated life is and how messy we seem to make things for ourselves. But something was missing. Heart, maybe?
September 10, 2017
Parts of this book pull you along, but others you have to wade through. I found the main character to be very odd and tiring to read about as she swings from emotion to emotion.
September 21, 2017
I felt the ending was rushed and the book was not very well written.
October 18, 2017
It seemed slow to develop, but when I finished it, I understood why. Well researched and believable.
February 3, 2019
Deleted to make room on my over full MP3 player...
July 10, 2023
This started off strongly and then quickly dissolved into a narrative that seemed to have been pieced together to shock and outrage the reader. The writing definitely draws you in. 2 🌟 for that.
July 25, 2023
I did not see this going in the direction that it went. It was kinda crazy! Surprising. Ending wasn’t my fave but overall I enjoyed reading this book.
January 1, 2024
This was too long and too terrible
May 8, 2024
This was hard to get into, then it got really good, and then it got uncomfortable, in an I'm-not-sure-that-was-really-necessary kind of way. I get what the author was trying to say, but I'm not sure they went about it the right way. It was a good book overall, one that stays with you for a few days as you mull it over, but it also made me feel a bit icky.
September 24, 2014
I can’t help thinking that “challenging” is an overused word in the book review shtick, but, Angie Abdou’s Between is a challenging book. It’s not challenging in a stylistic sense, like Joyce or Woolf — Abdou’s writing is laid-back and accessible. And Between is not a monumental modern day À la recherche du temps perdu — it’s a quick three hundred pages covering a year in the lives of an upper-middle class Canadian family and their Filipina nanny. Potentially pretty tame stuff. And while Between is perhaps challenging in that it acknowledges that parenting is often gruelling, that one must often “make the conscious choice to laugh instead of cry”, the deep challenge of the novel, I think, is a challenge to our fundamental assumptions about what is desirable in life.
“Between” is the story of Vero and Shane, 40-something parents of Eliot and Jamal and Ligaya, the nanny they bring to Canada to look after their children. The basic premise in some ways makes me roll my eyes like Debbie in Stoppard’s The Real Thing: “Infidelity among the architect class. Again.” Rich people have it so tough. As annoyingly self-absorbed and blinkered as Vero and Shane are, what becomes quickly clear is that they are a mirror held up to Canadian affluence. What starts out as the story of a couple suffering the burden of success, desperately trying to find themselves or lose themselves in drugs and sex, soon becomes a mesh of interwoven metaphors pointing to larger issues than “Where will Vero get her Percocet today?”
Early in the book, Shane tells Vero “We can have everything. Let’s take it.” This becomes their almost unwavering policy through the book, from bringing Ligaya to Canada, through their Saturnalian Jamaican holiday, to the final crisis in Ligaya’s basement bedroom. Near the middle of the book, Vero remembers (and quickly forgets) a statement her own mother once made:
My generation worked for a world in which women could do anything. Your generation misinterpreted that to mean that you must do everything.
Shortly after, Vero and Shane are at the Jamaican resort named “Hedonism”, making a brave effort to do, in fact, everything. . . .
Read the rest of my Hasty Thoughts on Angie Abdou's "Between" here: http://behindthehedge.wordpress.com/2...
“Between” is the story of Vero and Shane, 40-something parents of Eliot and Jamal and Ligaya, the nanny they bring to Canada to look after their children. The basic premise in some ways makes me roll my eyes like Debbie in Stoppard’s The Real Thing: “Infidelity among the architect class. Again.” Rich people have it so tough. As annoyingly self-absorbed and blinkered as Vero and Shane are, what becomes quickly clear is that they are a mirror held up to Canadian affluence. What starts out as the story of a couple suffering the burden of success, desperately trying to find themselves or lose themselves in drugs and sex, soon becomes a mesh of interwoven metaphors pointing to larger issues than “Where will Vero get her Percocet today?”
Early in the book, Shane tells Vero “We can have everything. Let’s take it.” This becomes their almost unwavering policy through the book, from bringing Ligaya to Canada, through their Saturnalian Jamaican holiday, to the final crisis in Ligaya’s basement bedroom. Near the middle of the book, Vero remembers (and quickly forgets) a statement her own mother once made:
My generation worked for a world in which women could do anything. Your generation misinterpreted that to mean that you must do everything.
Shortly after, Vero and Shane are at the Jamaican resort named “Hedonism”, making a brave effort to do, in fact, everything. . . .
Read the rest of my Hasty Thoughts on Angie Abdou's "Between" here: http://behindthehedge.wordpress.com/2...
April 7, 2015
‘Between’ by Angie Abdou
Between is a powerful book. It gradually pulls you in, entangling you with its twin protagonists and parallel themes until you become too intrigued to abandon it.
Slowly, the subject matter becomes hard and uncomfortable, on the edge of alien. The initial thesis is easy enough to accept and well worth developing: What happens in the mind of women obliged by circumstance to look after the children of others while abandoning their own?
But the counter-thesis is not at all as easy to grasp. Why would a financially comfortable woman choose a job she does not particularly enjoy over caring for her own young children? And once freed from her childcare responsibilities why would she then focus on a rebellious escape into sensory overload and ‘fixing’ a marriage that does not appear to be broken rather than on pursuing the intellectually satisfying career she claims to want?
Angie Abdou develops her twin storylines with a deft and delicate touch that will keep you engaged even if you struggle, as I did, with feelings of irritation and repulsion towards this second character. And then, almost imperceptibly, the two themes merge into one - the quest for personal agency at all costs, even if that means such a fall from grace that redemption no longer seems possible - and it all begins to make sense.
Towards the end of the book, the first character emerges with a richness and complexity belied by her former stereotype and the second character lays claim to a sympathy it was previously easy to deny her. But the ending seems very sudden. Unfinished? I don’t know. Yet, the characters continued to reverberate in my mind well after I put the book down for the final time - and that is a telling mark of a good story.
Between’ is a book well worth reading that will stay with you a long time. Angie Abdou has woven a story that will oblige you to examine the boundaries of personal morality and social roles and responsibilities and the driving human need to become all that we can be.
Emma Pivato,
April 6th, 2015
Between is a powerful book. It gradually pulls you in, entangling you with its twin protagonists and parallel themes until you become too intrigued to abandon it.
Slowly, the subject matter becomes hard and uncomfortable, on the edge of alien. The initial thesis is easy enough to accept and well worth developing: What happens in the mind of women obliged by circumstance to look after the children of others while abandoning their own?
But the counter-thesis is not at all as easy to grasp. Why would a financially comfortable woman choose a job she does not particularly enjoy over caring for her own young children? And once freed from her childcare responsibilities why would she then focus on a rebellious escape into sensory overload and ‘fixing’ a marriage that does not appear to be broken rather than on pursuing the intellectually satisfying career she claims to want?
Angie Abdou develops her twin storylines with a deft and delicate touch that will keep you engaged even if you struggle, as I did, with feelings of irritation and repulsion towards this second character. And then, almost imperceptibly, the two themes merge into one - the quest for personal agency at all costs, even if that means such a fall from grace that redemption no longer seems possible - and it all begins to make sense.
Towards the end of the book, the first character emerges with a richness and complexity belied by her former stereotype and the second character lays claim to a sympathy it was previously easy to deny her. But the ending seems very sudden. Unfinished? I don’t know. Yet, the characters continued to reverberate in my mind well after I put the book down for the final time - and that is a telling mark of a good story.
Between’ is a book well worth reading that will stay with you a long time. Angie Abdou has woven a story that will oblige you to examine the boundaries of personal morality and social roles and responsibilities and the driving human need to become all that we can be.
Emma Pivato,
April 6th, 2015
Read
March 27, 2015First of all: if you're in my reading group, STOP! Don't read this yet--we will talk on Saturday. I'm leading the discussion questions and I don't want to lead with my own opinions.
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Note for the author:
Okay, now I'll say my opinions. Wow! What a gutsy use of literature, Angie! You went there. I feel like I read this novel in the context of your "framing it" on the book tour. The fact that you use your writing to figure out things that are worrying you or on your mind in some way--that makes a lot of sense to me. I'm not a writer myself and so I have other ways to work things out but I really respect this way. First, because I believe that one of the best "side effects" of reading fiction is empathy. And I empathized with Vero (because I share her privileged life) even if I would make different choices. I'm in no position to judge her, having made mistakes in my own life, and so I'm forced to think more deeply about some of the issues brought up in the book. Secondly, I respect this novel as an attempt to spark some really important conversations that women need to have (with each other and with their partners.) What does a happy fulfilled life look like? What are you willing to sacrifice in order to achieve that? Why are we so hard on ourselves? Thirdly, I found this book to be well written (literary!) yet accessible (a page turner!) I did NOT see the end coming and I was properly shocked. Well done.
*************************************
Note for the author:
Okay, now I'll say my opinions. Wow! What a gutsy use of literature, Angie! You went there. I feel like I read this novel in the context of your "framing it" on the book tour. The fact that you use your writing to figure out things that are worrying you or on your mind in some way--that makes a lot of sense to me. I'm not a writer myself and so I have other ways to work things out but I really respect this way. First, because I believe that one of the best "side effects" of reading fiction is empathy. And I empathized with Vero (because I share her privileged life) even if I would make different choices. I'm in no position to judge her, having made mistakes in my own life, and so I'm forced to think more deeply about some of the issues brought up in the book. Secondly, I respect this novel as an attempt to spark some really important conversations that women need to have (with each other and with their partners.) What does a happy fulfilled life look like? What are you willing to sacrifice in order to achieve that? Why are we so hard on ourselves? Thirdly, I found this book to be well written (literary!) yet accessible (a page turner!) I did NOT see the end coming and I was properly shocked. Well done.
May 18, 2015
When Vero, a white, middle-class housewife is immobilized by motherhood her husband Shane convinces her to hire a live-in nanny from the Philippines and Ligaya moves in. Guilty about the privilege that allows her to have help Vero tries to equalize their relationship although, of course, she really cannot. Vero is just more powerful than Ligaya due to race and class and while Vero can pretend that she sees Ligaya as a peer she is just as smug and entitled as any other woman in her position. I became invested in their fraught dance and I admired how understandable, and at times funny, Abdou made this common, yet complex story. Halfway into the book, however, Shane convinces Vero to vacation at a sex resort and I definitely stopped laughing. When Vero and her husband become sexually engaged and friendly with another heterosexual couple it turns ugly. This section of the book left me cold and I read it over and over to understand its connection to the last part of the book when Ligaya and Vero seem more at peace with each other. Is Abdou proposing that due to gender, to the fact that they are both powerless at times and more powerful at others there is some understanding that can occur? Is it even true? Overall, a complicated book with powerful dynamics around race and class that will leave me ruminating about its message for some time. Thank you to Edelweiss for allowing me to review this book.
January 6, 2015
I didn't really get it.
The book starts off great. I was pretty invested in it, particularly because the author did a good job of making me feel for the Filipino nanny and her sacrifice. The first third of the book sort of rests on that: the build up of what it's like to be a nanny looking for opportunities to better her family's life.
The middle third was a sharp turn. The couple visited a swingers' resort (not a spoiler; the fact that they went is not, in itself, consequential) and this is where the book started to lose me. The book spends a fair amount of time describing their time there. It felt out of place.
The last third and the conclusion lost me. I didn't feel like this was where the story should have went. It felt random and uncharacteristic of the story's key players - at least that was my interpretation of the characters, however well you can know several people in 200 pages. To use a Hunger Games analogy, it was like if at the end of that series, Katniss, Peeta, and Gale have a threesome. It's just not very characteristic of anyone to do that.
I wouldn't go as far as to say it's not worth reading, but it wasn't what I anticipated and I think it could have been better.
The book starts off great. I was pretty invested in it, particularly because the author did a good job of making me feel for the Filipino nanny and her sacrifice. The first third of the book sort of rests on that: the build up of what it's like to be a nanny looking for opportunities to better her family's life.
The middle third was a sharp turn. The couple visited a swingers' resort (not a spoiler; the fact that they went is not, in itself, consequential) and this is where the book started to lose me. The book spends a fair amount of time describing their time there. It felt out of place.
The last third and the conclusion lost me. I didn't feel like this was where the story should have went. It felt random and uncharacteristic of the story's key players - at least that was my interpretation of the characters, however well you can know several people in 200 pages. To use a Hunger Games analogy, it was like if at the end of that series, Katniss, Peeta, and Gale have a threesome. It's just not very characteristic of anyone to do that.
I wouldn't go as far as to say it's not worth reading, but it wasn't what I anticipated and I think it could have been better.
April 23, 2015
I really enjoyed this novel. It spoke of important social topics including the labour issues of foreign female employees, feminist politics, motherhood, and sex and drugs. For me it hit home that a lot of women continue to be trapped in the primary role of caregivers once they have children. Their whole life changes, but the man’s life aka the father’s life seems to continue mostly the same as before the children. Women are still expected to “do it all.”
The story takes quite the interesting turn when Vero and Shane vacation at a Hedonism resort. I felt the women at the resort were the sex objects/slaves for the men’s pleasure and it seemed most of them including Vero felt pressured to perform. That did not sit well with me but I am not familiar with Hedonism.
The ending of the novel disappointed me as I felt it did not wrap things up to my satisfaction. I was very invested in the characters and would have liked to know a bit more of how their lives turned out. Maybe we will find out in a part two?
Overall an engaging thought-provoking story and well worth the read.
The story takes quite the interesting turn when Vero and Shane vacation at a Hedonism resort. I felt the women at the resort were the sex objects/slaves for the men’s pleasure and it seemed most of them including Vero felt pressured to perform. That did not sit well with me but I am not familiar with Hedonism.
The ending of the novel disappointed me as I felt it did not wrap things up to my satisfaction. I was very invested in the characters and would have liked to know a bit more of how their lives turned out. Maybe we will find out in a part two?
Overall an engaging thought-provoking story and well worth the read.
September 29, 2014
Vero is a mom of 2 who works part-time and finally accepts the fact that she needs help managing the kids and household. Lili (or Ligaya) is the nanny they hire to come help by way of Hong Kong.
Much of this book is Vero's struggle to realize her role in life. She dabbles in parenting, working part-time, yoga, friendships, etc. but doesn't seem to know where she's going so flounders.
The relationship turn mid-way through the book took me by surprise and then changed the direction of the storyline. It changed some of the feel of the book but the main theme of Vero's uncertainty still shines through.
Good writing and good characters. I think I would have liked a little more definitive ending so I could put the story to bed instead of wondering what happened next.
Much of this book is Vero's struggle to realize her role in life. She dabbles in parenting, working part-time, yoga, friendships, etc. but doesn't seem to know where she's going so flounders.
The relationship turn mid-way through the book took me by surprise and then changed the direction of the storyline. It changed some of the feel of the book but the main theme of Vero's uncertainty still shines through.
Good writing and good characters. I think I would have liked a little more definitive ending so I could put the story to bed instead of wondering what happened next.
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