The Time Between Space is a dark comedy about love and loss, and how a childhood falsely remembered can years later distort what we feel about those closest to us.
The story follows the protagonist, Emma, during her childhood and adult years in Edinburgh and East Lothian. Emma Maria Rossini should be the luckiest girl in the world, except that’s not how she sees it. She’s the daughter of a famous film actor and a loving mother, and a gilded life of privilege seems hers for the taking. She also happens to be the granddaughter of an eccentric Italian astrophysicist.
But when tragedy strikes, and her world begins to fall apart, she reinvents childhood memories to find someone to blame. Her reaction to her mother’s death precipitates a suicide attempt and leads to her estrangement from her father. Emma stumbles through university and finds work as a journalist in Edinburgh, although she once more starts to become mentally unstable and, following the death of her father, she ends up attempting suicide again. It’s while she’s in hospital that her psychiatrist suggests she write a memoir of her life, to help her make sense of everything that’s happened to her. The Time Between Space is the story she writes. As she reflects on the complexities and interrelationships in her world, Emma finds solace in her grandfather’s theorem on the universe.
The Time Between Spaceis more than just Emma’s memoir; it is the story of millions of women around the world as they grapple with the struggles of their mental health in the process of unravelling their pasts. Poignant, humorous, and heartbreaking, Emma’s story reminds us that we are never as alone or as unconnected as we believe ourselves to be.
Genre: Mystery
The story follows the protagonist, Emma, during her childhood and adult years in Edinburgh and East Lothian. Emma Maria Rossini should be the luckiest girl in the world, except that’s not how she sees it. She’s the daughter of a famous film actor and a loving mother, and a gilded life of privilege seems hers for the taking. She also happens to be the granddaughter of an eccentric Italian astrophysicist.
But when tragedy strikes, and her world begins to fall apart, she reinvents childhood memories to find someone to blame. Her reaction to her mother’s death precipitates a suicide attempt and leads to her estrangement from her father. Emma stumbles through university and finds work as a journalist in Edinburgh, although she once more starts to become mentally unstable and, following the death of her father, she ends up attempting suicide again. It’s while she’s in hospital that her psychiatrist suggests she write a memoir of her life, to help her make sense of everything that’s happened to her. The Time Between Space is the story she writes. As she reflects on the complexities and interrelationships in her world, Emma finds solace in her grandfather’s theorem on the universe.
The Time Between Spaceis more than just Emma’s memoir; it is the story of millions of women around the world as they grapple with the struggles of their mental health in the process of unravelling their pasts. Poignant, humorous, and heartbreaking, Emma’s story reminds us that we are never as alone or as unconnected as we believe ourselves to be.
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for Charlie Laidlaw's The Time Before Space