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The Space Between Us
The Space Between Us tells the story of an Irish architect who loses his wife, Beth, in a car accident, and is left to bring up his three-year-old daughter alone. In the immediate aftermath of Beth's death, his emotions lurch from relief to guilt: relief because he no longer has to pretend to have any interest in a relationship that has been falling apart for some time, and guilt because he did not have the courage to talk to Beth before her death. As time goes by, and his daughter Jane grows up, father and daughter grow closer. The reader gradually realises that this relationship is not as it should be. A disturbing and shocking story, deftly told.
- GenresFictionContemporary
282 pages, Paperback
First published May 8, 2009
56 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 16, 2013
I suspect that I am not alone in having difficulty with what is revealed at the end of this otherwise absorbing book. A widower’s grown up daughter is murdered. The book deals with the man’s grief and his interaction with friends and relatives in the aftermath. The details of the domestic rituals surrounding an Irish funeral are instructive for anyone not familiar with them. There are a couple of, to my mind, unnecessary sex scenes but in general the man’s behaviour is sympathetically handled and well realised – except that revelation at the end which simply did not ring true for me.
The following added 16 March 2013:
I had the pleasure of meeting John MacKenna today - he conducted a workshop for the writing group of which I am a member. The subject of "The Space Between Us" came up (more than once!). On the question of what is revealed at the end MacKenna confirmed that it has proven difficult for many readers who told him "I loved the book but I couldn't take the last 12 pages." He went on to tell us that his two beta readers were divided about whether he should include those pages when sending the MS to his agent. He decided to leave them out. The agent responded saying she thought there was something missing so he sent her the twelve pages he had witheld. She accepted them and they appear in the published version of the book.
Frankly, if that doesn't make you go out and get the book to find out what those pages contain, I don't know what will. But do read the whole book and save the end until the end! I have revised my star rating from 3 to 4 as a result of that discussion.
The following added 16 March 2013:
I had the pleasure of meeting John MacKenna today - he conducted a workshop for the writing group of which I am a member. The subject of "The Space Between Us" came up (more than once!). On the question of what is revealed at the end MacKenna confirmed that it has proven difficult for many readers who told him "I loved the book but I couldn't take the last 12 pages." He went on to tell us that his two beta readers were divided about whether he should include those pages when sending the MS to his agent. He decided to leave them out. The agent responded saying she thought there was something missing so he sent her the twelve pages he had witheld. She accepted them and they appear in the published version of the book.
Frankly, if that doesn't make you go out and get the book to find out what those pages contain, I don't know what will. But do read the whole book and save the end until the end! I have revised my star rating from 3 to 4 as a result of that discussion.
Read
July 25, 2011This was a wonderful book, until the last 10 pages. How disgusting and shocking of an end. The book however,was wonderfully written, and through the entire book I hoped that they would be together, However the disturbing way this book ended ruined the book for me. I was so upset that I almost threw the book across the room!
December 4, 2010
An essay on grief, and more. Equisitely written.
December 29, 2018
This was a four star until the ending -- more than disturbing, the ending didn't really feel believable, but it definitely put the book in the category of "excellent writing, probably not a book most would want to read."
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October 6, 2023I cannot rate this book. I loved reading it, and in the end I had to rethink everything. It wasn’t the story I thought I was reading. It wasn’t the story I wanted it to be, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
October 5, 2012
Truthfully, I want to rate this 1 star. Maybe no stars, but that's not really fair. It's not that it's not that it's poorly written. It isn't. The prose is spare, but mostly beautifully done, and I think MacKenna achieves what he set out to do. I just didn't enjoy the end result because of the ending.
It starts with the death of the narrator's wife, so we never meet her, except through his eyes. It was not a happy marriage and so when the officers come to the door and he finally understands what happened, he's relieved. With that, of course, comes guilt. He raises his daughter and journeys through life as a widower and single parent. His family and friends try to gently nudge him to where they think he should be, but he lives his life as he thinks he needs to for himself and Jane.
I cannot really explain more without giving major spoilers. So know that going forward I'll be giving a whole lot away. Well, the whole kit and caboodle really.
Over the next 15 or so years, the man (he remains nameless through the book) raises his daughter who was three at the time of the accident. He doesn't seem to have any close relationships with anyone other than his brother, who moves to Arizona (the setting is Ireland) near the beginning of the novel and his neighbor friends, Kate and Brian, whose two daughters are friends with his own. Even though the narrator is telling his own story, he's so closed off that it's difficult to feel you know him.
The language and writing propel the reader through the story, but there's this feel all throughout that there's something coming, and so there's this tension that builds and builds because maybe there's a twist that the narrator doesn't know or maybe the narrator is leaving something out (the book is broken up into five parts with the narrative leapfrogging the years without so much as a word to note the passage of time). And then his daughter Jane is killed. So you think, oh. That's what was coming. Except it is and it isn't. As closed off as the narrator is, he doesn't seem terribly reliable, but it turns out that he is honest to a fault, and he circles round to tell more than I wanted to know in the last and shortest part of the story.
All throughout, his friends and family urge him to find a woman. To bring someone into his and Jane's lives. To give Jane a mother figure. Something. But he doesn't. He doesn't know how to include someone without sacrificing his relationship with Jane. So he doesn't. And they live happily enough.
And then the year before Jane is killed, they go to Greece on holiday, and a drunken night leads Jane to kiss her father. And that leads to...yeah. It's weirdly not salacious although it's not exactly left to the imagination either. According to the narrator, it never happened before. It continues, with Jane setting the terms. It's shocking, and weirdly not shocking, but I definitely would have preferred that the narrator not have revealed (freudian slip of the fingers, I typed reviled at first) this, but there you have it. It's shocking, but I can almost understand how it happened with how MacKenna set the story, but it doesn't make it any more palatable.
It starts with the death of the narrator's wife, so we never meet her, except through his eyes. It was not a happy marriage and so when the officers come to the door and he finally understands what happened, he's relieved. With that, of course, comes guilt. He raises his daughter and journeys through life as a widower and single parent. His family and friends try to gently nudge him to where they think he should be, but he lives his life as he thinks he needs to for himself and Jane.
I cannot really explain more without giving major spoilers. So know that going forward I'll be giving a whole lot away. Well, the whole kit and caboodle really.
Over the next 15 or so years, the man (he remains nameless through the book) raises his daughter who was three at the time of the accident. He doesn't seem to have any close relationships with anyone other than his brother, who moves to Arizona (the setting is Ireland) near the beginning of the novel and his neighbor friends, Kate and Brian, whose two daughters are friends with his own. Even though the narrator is telling his own story, he's so closed off that it's difficult to feel you know him.
The language and writing propel the reader through the story, but there's this feel all throughout that there's something coming, and so there's this tension that builds and builds because maybe there's a twist that the narrator doesn't know or maybe the narrator is leaving something out (the book is broken up into five parts with the narrative leapfrogging the years without so much as a word to note the passage of time). And then his daughter Jane is killed. So you think, oh. That's what was coming. Except it is and it isn't. As closed off as the narrator is, he doesn't seem terribly reliable, but it turns out that he is honest to a fault, and he circles round to tell more than I wanted to know in the last and shortest part of the story.
All throughout, his friends and family urge him to find a woman. To bring someone into his and Jane's lives. To give Jane a mother figure. Something. But he doesn't. He doesn't know how to include someone without sacrificing his relationship with Jane. So he doesn't. And they live happily enough.
And then the year before Jane is killed, they go to Greece on holiday, and a drunken night leads Jane to kiss her father. And that leads to...yeah. It's weirdly not salacious although it's not exactly left to the imagination either. According to the narrator, it never happened before. It continues, with Jane setting the terms. It's shocking, and weirdly not shocking, but I definitely would have preferred that the narrator not have revealed (freudian slip of the fingers, I typed reviled at first) this, but there you have it. It's shocking, but I can almost understand how it happened with how MacKenna set the story, but it doesn't make it any more palatable.
December 3, 2014
If literature is something with the ability to shock and transform, John MacKenna has created a masterpiece. One of Ireland’s most accomplished writers, MacKenna explores the complexities of love, friendship and loss in The Space Between Us.
At the heart of this novel is a straightforward narrative of an anonymous Irish architect who lives in an unspecified country area outside of Dublin. When he loses his wife in a car accident, instead of feeling overwhelmed with grief, he is overwhelmed by relief, having known for a long time that his marriage was dead but that neither he nor his wife had the courage to end it. Left to raise their two-year-old daughter alone, he feels like he has been given the chance to start anew. When a married neighbour admits that she is in love with him, it looks as if there is a clear plot ahead, but MacKenna is much too clever for that.
Seventeen years later, his daughter is found murdered and the narrative takes a trajectory of remembrance, revealing a shocking secret at the heart of the novel and explaining the crux of the book’s title – that the space between us might always be greater than we know. In a manner not dissimilar to Nabokov – but perhaps more sinister – MacKenna unsettles and disturbs the reader’s relationship not only with the narrator but also with the storyteller; the fundamental premise is strong; things are not always as they seem.
At the heart of this novel is a straightforward narrative of an anonymous Irish architect who lives in an unspecified country area outside of Dublin. When he loses his wife in a car accident, instead of feeling overwhelmed with grief, he is overwhelmed by relief, having known for a long time that his marriage was dead but that neither he nor his wife had the courage to end it. Left to raise their two-year-old daughter alone, he feels like he has been given the chance to start anew. When a married neighbour admits that she is in love with him, it looks as if there is a clear plot ahead, but MacKenna is much too clever for that.
Seventeen years later, his daughter is found murdered and the narrative takes a trajectory of remembrance, revealing a shocking secret at the heart of the novel and explaining the crux of the book’s title – that the space between us might always be greater than we know. In a manner not dissimilar to Nabokov – but perhaps more sinister – MacKenna unsettles and disturbs the reader’s relationship not only with the narrator but also with the storyteller; the fundamental premise is strong; things are not always as they seem.
October 18, 2011
When the narrator's wife dies in a car crash, he's partly relieved, because their marriage had been falling apart, and partly guilty, because he didn't try harder to fix things. Left to raise their daughter on his own, father and daughter grow closer until tragedy strikes again, fifteen years later.
I alternated between liking how well-written and weird and depressing this was, and skimming chapters. Plus, the weirdness leads up to an even more bizarre shock of an ending that left me too unsettled to give this more than two stars.
I alternated between liking how well-written and weird and depressing this was, and skimming chapters. Plus, the weirdness leads up to an even more bizarre shock of an ending that left me too unsettled to give this more than two stars.
July 7, 2016
I mostly enjoyed this book until the last few pages. There are a few sections that are a little slow but there are other sections where I was deeply moved and couldnt wait to read more. Without providing any spoilers, the ending is a total shock that comes out of nowhere. The last few pages make you feel that you missed something the entire time. I wish there would have been a few more glimpses of what this truly was about.
May 28, 2013
This book is disgusting. That's all there is to it. It's also pretty boring... I was getting fed up with the wooden tone of it and the excruciatingly dull characters, and so I started flipping through to get an idea what happens in the end. I wish I hadn't. It's revolting, plain and simple. Wish I could give this zero stars.
June 15, 2011
Quick, easy read. I couldn't put it down because of the tease of a shocking twist at the end. I figured out the twist about 180 pages in then spent the rest of the book hoping I wasn't right. The end ruined it for me. I would not recommend this book.
January 3, 2012
Loved the way he writes, he beautifully describes the passages in the book on such a high level of greatnes, however, the book has a very, dare I say weird and disturbing ending that I hoped it wouldn take away from the whole book, but i think it does :(
September 28, 2010
Very good, insightful, ending supposed to be unexpected (I guessed it prior). Would recommend it as an enjoyable easy read.
October 11, 2010
This book held my attention, but wasn't great...then when I got the ending I was shocked. Ugh!
October 15, 2010
This book had a bizarre twist at the end that was a little tough for me to swallow. Not necessarily a book I would recommend.
October 17, 2010
Whew. A knockout.
March 31, 2012
this book is depressing and very twisted. Did not like the ending at all.
July 16, 2013
This is a horrible book. I strongly suggest not reading it. I picked it up at the library after reading the fly leaf. Nothing prepared me for the distasteful revelation at the very end of the book.
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July 13, 2015It's beautifully written but I just wish I hadn't read this book. Like other readers, the twist at the end really disturbed me and I couldn't make it fit no matter how I tried.
February 12, 2016
Brilliantly written tale of love and loss, friendship and betrayal.
May 18, 2016
Totally unexpected ending!
December 7, 2016
Great writing. And then you find out in the last pages that the entire book is centered around incest.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews