Product Description

Toby Hawk is a solitary boy in a family of Amazons. His mother, only fifteen years older than him, is a painter on the brink of commercial success. His great-aunt is a wealthy textile designer; her partner, Liberty, a barrister. Meanwhile, eighteen-year-old Toby's world remains a small, closed round of school, domesticity and surfing the Net at night. But everything changes when his mother takes up with a fascinating but enigmatic scientist, Roehm. Patricia Duncker's gripping novel is a disturbing tale of Oedipal passion. It is also an eerie psychological ghost story in the European tradition, whose sources - Freud, Faust and Frankenstein - haunt the pages.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #455764 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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

Sunday Telegraph
Patricia Duncker writes beautifully with a flamboyant immediacy

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

Customer Reviews

Literary Vivid and Accessible Page Turner
this is a great book. very well written, pacey but deep. Treads the boundary between the real and the imaginary with great skill and control. It also made me laugh out loud in parts which, for me, is a rarity with novels. very strong and disturbing characterisations especially Roehm. PD is not scared of tackling matters sexual and grotesque with tremendous results. one of the best books i've read for a long while.

Fantastic
I'm only half-way into the book at the moment so dare say I shouldn't be reviewing it yet but I just can't wait.
After reading 'Hallucinating Foucault' I was prompted to read 'The Deadly Space Between', simlilarly to that it has the same mature text, eloquent metaphors and beautiful descriptiveness. It is however not as immediate as 'Hallucinating Foucault' and for any reader looking for their first foray into Duncker's work I would recommend this as apposed to 'The Deadly Space Between' to begin with before progressing to.
In various parts of these two novels it is plain to see just how fabulous the author is.
I won't go into detail around the actual plot as it isn't fair to as I haven't actually finished reading it but it is completely captivating (given some patience) and challenging almost.

This is definately recommended.

Simply Brilliant!
I bought this book simply from the blurb and I was not disappointed! The characters are compelling and likable and the ending is shocking. The seemingly normal beginning of everyday events quickly draw you into the characters bizarre lives and from there the story quickly begins to unfold. You cannot fail to love this book and the characters and the story stay with you even after you have put the book down. You must read this book!