Thrity Umrigar's eighth novel follows the main character of her bestselling The Space Between Us (2006), the servant Bhima, over the course of a year. The life of Parvati, a minor character in that earlier novel, becomes intricately entwined with Bhima's in this sequel.

Parvati has the sadder background of the two: Sold into prostitution as a young girl by her desperately poor father, she spent two decades in a brothel before one of her regulars asks her to marry him. She trades one horrific life for another, as she is regularly abused by him and is left penniless when he dies. Now Parvati exists by selling six cauliflowers a day from her spot at an outdoor market; she sleeps under the stairwell outside her nephew's apartment and eats leftovers from a nearby restaurant.

Bhima has been forced to leave one of her servant jobs and is looking for a way to earn extra money to help send her granddaughter, Maya, to college. She meets Parvati at the market, and they form a working partnership. As the two lonely women grow closer, they gradually begin to share their stories, listening without judgment to the secrets they've hidden from others—poverty, illiteracy, sexual abuse, multiple abortions, offspring who died from AIDS. Nothing is left unsaid.

Umrigar places these two old women, steeped in the strict class distinctions of their upbringing, in the midst of modern-day Mumbai. Through the character of Maya, the author builds hope for classes to better themselves, for gender equality and for a decrease in homophobia and sexual assault in India's future. Her emotional portrayal of these two strong women will be a popular choice for book clubs, and for readers who enjoy multicultural family sagas.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the luminous Umrigar's sequel to The Space Between Us, Bhima has long served the upper-middle-class Dubashes, but speaking up about a crime visited on her own family gets her summarily fired. Soon, though, she begins selling fruits and vegetables with an older woman named Parvati and discovers her one true friend. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

This new work continues novelist, journalist, and critic Umrigar's acclaimed second novel, The Space Between Us. Focusing on Bhima, one of the two main characters in that book, it picks up Bhima's story following her dismissal from the Dubash household, where she'd worked for more than two decades. It is Sera Dubash, with whom Bhima had shared an unusual intimacy given their class differences, who carries out the termination. The harshness of Sera's action is outweighed only by Bhima's anxiety about how she will support her granddaughter Maya, who is expected to finish college. Umrigar once again deftly weaves the narratives of two women, this time juxtaposing Bhima's plight with that of Parvati, whose circumstances are even more desperate. Through the use of flashbacks as well as present-day events, the author reveals the secrets that led these women to the slums of Mumbai. VERDICT Picking up The Space Between Us first may enlighten readers about Bhima's backstory, but this title easily stands on its own. It chronicles the triumph of women's friendships and fortitude in the face of considerable obstacles—poverty, homophobia, illiteracy, gender discrimination, ageism, and sexual assault. It further displays Umrigar's insights into the deep resilience of the human heart.—Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

Umrigar's luminous sequel to The Space Between Us continues the story of Bhima, now bereft of her position as servant in the present-day Mumbai household of Serabai Dubash and desperate to find some way to support herself and her granddaughter, Maya. Dinaz, Serabai's daughter, arrives and presents Bhima with a check for the decades of savings that have been in Serabai's keeping; Bhima immediately decides to use the funds to pay for Maya's college. While Bhima and Maya live in a hovel in Mumbai's slum, Parvati, the novel's other main character, sleeps in a doorway, scraping by on the small amounts of food she receives as charity. Chance circumstances bring the two women together to form a business partnership and they, Maya, and Bhima's new employers, Sunitabai and Chitra, become like family to one another. The leads have suffered immensely in life—for them, "everything is an ambush"—and yet neither surrenders. Umrigar writes her characters so that, rather than being pitiable, they have an admirable strength. Her amazing cast is coupled with shining prose and a plot that consistently startles and gratifies. This splendid tale should appeal to all readers with open hearts, regardless of their familiarity with the previous work or the culture of Mumbai. (June)