The Deadly Space Between - Hardcover

Duncker, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0330490095 ISBN 13: 9780330490092

Publisher: Picador, 2002

Synopsis

A brilliant novel narrated by an intelligent and humorous teenager who has just turned 18. His mother, an artist, described as having a "masculine style" taught part time in the local art college, and showers affection on him although never tells him anything about his mysterious father, whom he has never met. He finds out from his Aunt Luce that he was rich and married. He sees his mother have two affairs and now suspects she is in a new relationship. She is with a middle aged exotic looking man called Roehm. Mother and son look alike and are often mistaken for brother and sister. He is jealous and determined to find out about this new love. His discoveries turn his world upside down - as well as his mother's. For is Roehm really a "monster" as Aunt Luce describes or actually a magnificent patron? Playful, intelligent and humorous, this is Duncker's most accessible and commercial novel to date.

About this title

Review

Patricia Duncker's previous books have been cerebral, involved tales (as is indicated by their titles, like Hallucinating Foucault, or Monsieur Shoushana's Lemon Trees). The Deadly Spaces Between, by contrast, is painted with a lusher, warmer emotional palette. The tale is told from a masculine perspective, with conviction and some verve. The narrator is Toby Hawk, the teenage son of a famous female artist. The setting is a "draughty, comfortable, mid-Victorian mass of red brick and white gables", deep in the rainy English provinces. Living alongside Toby and mum are a grandiose lesbian great aunt and her posh lawyer partner Liberty. All very emancipated. Yet, despite the unorthodox nature of this menage, the atmosphere in the house, as Duncker artfully sketches it, is positively bourgeois in its stasis. These people are glib and inert; nothing can disturb their complacent bohemianism. Then Duncker puts some mustard on the novelistic sandwich. A dark stranger comes, "a huge heavy man with a black car". This abrupt intrusion of this animated, brainy scientist, Roehm, throws the "Amazonian triangle" into a tizz, and kicks off a mystery that will take young Toby to London and beyond--to gay bars, opera houses, biology labs, ski runs, as well as the darker recesses of scientific history. The result is at once clever, dry, confusing, elegant, reserved and, just occasionally, exhilarating. --Sean Thomas

Review

Patricia Duncker writes beautifully with a flamboyant immediacy -- Sunday Telegraph

‘A sexy Oedipal page-turner cum eerily effective ghost story' -- Financial Times

‘At her best, Duncker is a mesmerizing stylist.' -- Times Literary Supplement

‘Her work combines intellectual playfulness with the deadly suspense of a thriller' -- Literary Review

‘The Deadly Space Between confirms Patricia Duncker’s reputation as a writer who brilliantly realises ambitious themes' -- Big Issue

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0330490095
• ISBN 13: 9780330490092
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256