#Blogtour #Review - The Space Between Us by Doug Johnstone

The Space Between Us
Doug Johnstone
Orenda Books, 2 March 2023
Available as: PB, 276pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781914585449

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for an advance copy of The Space Between Us to consider for review, and to Anne Cater for inviting me to take part in the book's blogtour.

In his new novel Doug Johnstone - whose most recent works include the Skelfs detective series set at an Edinburgh undertaker's - really doesn't hang about, plunging us right into a fantastical plot with three varied and intriguing protagonists. Told in short chapters with dramatic changes of view, we quickly learn who is who.

Lennox is a lonely teenager living in a children's home. 

Ava is pregnant and trying to escape her coercive, in fact outright abusive, husband. 

Heather has lost her daughter and her husband, she has cancer and, when we first see her, is trying to end her own life.

All are about to have their destinies and lives changed when they encounter first, a strange light in the sky which leaves them hospitalised then miraculously healed, and secondly, a peculiar octopus-like creature washed up on the Edinburgh shoreline and affectionately named Sandy by the three.

In chapters told from their alternate perspectives, and those of a couple of other characters who are drawn in, we follow events during a frantic road trip across Scotland with several different but equally sinister authorities intent on capturing Sandy (I have tagged this review "Men in black") and a furious husband chasing down Ava.  (An interesting juxtaposition). The different viewpoints make for a clever technique - Ava, Lennox and Heather have a lot to come to terms with, both their own variously troubled lives and Sandy's unique nature. Their developing relationships with each other complicate this, and plot shock about. Johnstone's approach allows him, though all this, to both reveal and, at  times, to conceal, just what is happening, allowing the author sometimes to not describe things from the perspective of whoever has the clearest view, preserving ambiguity and building tension.

That ambiguity is at the heart of the story - we know how the scared authorities will react to Sandy, we know that Ava's husband has no good intentions for her, but what we don't know is how the gang will ultimately process what's going, how they will assimilate the incredible moral challenge presented by Sandy's existence and his need. Nor how those on whom whey will depend for help will react.

It all comes down to empathy, to the balance between their fears for their own future and their capacity for love, their ability to go on hoping. 

I don't want to over intellectualise this or make it sound over solemn, because its not. It's the very opposite. The Space Between Us is a thriller about human (and non human) nature, but it's a fun read, morally clear in that you can happily hiss at a couple of the characters and root for the others, (even if at times they do play fast and loose with legal niceties). As a science fiction adventure (that's not really a spoiler) the setup is by no means original - I could draw parallels with at least one well known film and a couple of other recent novels - but Johnstone brings to it his ability to create fresh and lively characters who quickly become very real to his readers. They are people you feel for - full of complexities and quirks and above all very very human. 

Additionally, the Scottish setting gives the whole thing an air of familiarity and localness which makes it all seem very plausible. And who doesn't love a good road trip?

In summary, The Space Between Us is a fresh and enjoyable story which explores some fundamental themes about what it is to be connected - or not. Tears may well have been shed over it... definitely recommended!

For more information about The Space Between Us, see the Orenda Books website here, and also the other steps on the tour, listed in the poster below.

You can buy The Space Between Us from your local bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, WH Smith, Foyles, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Blogtour #Review - One Last Time by Helga Flatland

One Last Time

Helga Flatland (translated by Rosie Hedger)

Orenda Books, 24 June 2021

Available as: PB, 244pp, e, audio

Source: Advance PB provided by the publisher

ISBN(PB): 978-1913193690

I'm grateful to Orenda Books and to Anne at Random Things Tours for providing a free copy of One Last Time and for inviting me to take part in the tour. I was especially delighted to be asked if I'd join the tour because I totally loved Helga Flatland's previous book for Orenda, A Modern Family. Giving a sophisticated, vivid, portrayal of modern, grown-up life - taking as its peg the decision of middle-aged parents to amicably divorce - A Modern Family was one of my standout favourites of 2019, and I was keen to see what Flatland would do next.

One Last Time is similarly focussed on family dynamics exposed by a shattering event, but it carries an even greater emotional charge since that event is the diagnosis with cancer, of Anne, a stolidly independent woman in her mid 60s. I tend to shy away from stories about cancer and from awareness campaigns and such: my father died of it when I was quite young, I just don't want to go there. 

But, well... with this book, Helga Flatland got right past my defences. 

First, it's not, in the end, a book "about cancer". Anne has a daughter, Sigrid, a doctor, and grandchildren: Mia, the eldest, is a bit of a handful for Sigrid and her partner Aslak. Mia's interested in her dad, Jens, who abandoned Mia when she was pregnant and Sigrid resents that. Anne's husband Gustav has been in a care home for some years after a series of strokes, leaving Anne (happily, it seems) alone in the remote countryside, visiting Gustav often but living her own life (she had a lover for a while). Sigrid lives in Oslo, and her brother Magnus flies in and out from his job on the oil rigs. The family dynamics are complex, and I got the impression that things work because of the space between everyone - as soon as any two of this family get close, sparks seem to fly.

Now, though, that sense of space seems bound to end.

The relationship between Anne and Sigrid in particular, as shaped by Anne's deepening illness, is the emotional heart of this novel. The story is so carefully observed, with chapters told from the perspective of each, sometimes reexamining the same conversations and events, sometimes passing the action like a relay baton from one to the other. There is simply so much here, from the different perspectives on Anne's treatment to radically conflicting accounts of Sigrid's childhood. Sigrid sees Anne as having been a rubbish mother, especially after Gustav became ill, Anne indignantly refutes this. Sigrid silently accuses her mother of being "selfish" regarding her illness, Anne's emotional resources are engaged in worrying over Gustav and over the loss of the little things - like her morning dip in the lake - that form her life. There are troubling episodes around the young Sigrid that are never completely explained or closed, but she seems to have had more support from her bother than from her mum.

Now, perhaps, Sigrid thinks, the prospect os death will persuade Anne to examine her life and make amends. She holds this viewpoint so strongly that I think much of her concern for her mother - the pressure for her to continue treatment, the demands that she drops her moving swimming session - seems motivated by that belief, as though by dying sooner rather than later Anne will somehow avoid that reckoning.

That's only one of the emotional currents in this complex, satisfying book. There are many more. All of it churns away (mostly) beneath the surface, seldom coming to an out-and-out row, although sometimes disagreements about proxy subjects, or developments in the lives of others (like Mia and Jens) move into focus and, as it were, draw down the lightning. One gets a real sense that a whole lifetime of emotional tension and compromise is suddenly coming home to roost, not actually demanding a final resolution (sorry, Sigrid) but still requiring attention, like that rattle in the car's engine which can't be ignored any longer longer. 

The moves and countermoves between Anne and Sigrid and Mia are too many, too subtle, to summarise and I won't try. Flatland is awesomely good at drawing them as characters, making everyone flawed but sympathetic, annoying at times, downright WRONG at others but always engaged, always involved. It's a book that, if you have any heart and soul at all, will just melt them, in a good way. Keep the tissues handy.

Given the subject matter - and that the story here isn't plot driven, doesn't admit of a tidy ending with everything sorted - the ending was never going to be "they all lived happily ever after" but even so, I found it uplifting, as well, of course, as being sad. Exploring courage in all its forms - courage in relationships, courage with illness, the courage, at the right time, not to be brave - this is a deeply human story and for me confirms Flatland as a writer whose books are not to be missed. I'm so glad I read it.

About Helga Flatland

Helga Flatland

Helga Flatland is already one of Norway’s most awarded and widely read authors. Born in Telemark,
Norway, in 1984, she made her literary debut in 2010 with the novel Stay If You Can, Leave If You Must, for which she was awarded the Tarjei Vesaas’ First Book Prize. She has written four novels and a children’s book and has won several other literary awards.

Her fifth novel, A Modern Family (her first English translation), was published to wide acclaim in Norway in August 2017, and was a number-one bestseller. The rights have subsequently been sold across Europe and the novel has sold more than 100,000 copies. One Last Time was published in Norway in 2020, where it topped the bestseller lists, and was shortlisted for the Norwegian Booksellers Award.

For more information about One Last Time, see the Orenda website here or consult the blog on the poster below!

You can buy One Last Time via Orenda at the link above, from your local bookshop, or online from Bookshop, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.