The story portrays Beth's depression and anxiety effectively, with a range of words and expressions and feelings including three whole pages of just shut up repeated over and over which I found very emotional to read. With Mouse comes Alice, Mouse's owner, and she and Beth tentatively start to become friends, with Alice gently understanding and respecting Beth's situation intuitively. The pleasure that Beth and Mouse enjoy in such a simple game is lovely to read. I also really loved Mouse, the dog, who comes along one day to interrupt Beth's solitude requesting that Beth throw the ball. I liked Beth as a character very much, and I felt a great deal of empathy towards her, in her escape from the world into books and routine and isolation, even without knowing what had triggered it. The style of the writing sits perfectly with the state of Beth's mind, and the ebb and flow of the text, the repetitions, and even the layout of the words on the page all combined to make it a beautiful reading experience. However, it gave me such an immediately intimate feeling, almost like I was snooping on Beth's personal life, that I found that I was caught up in the book straight away, and rather than being a struggle (as I admit some wordy poetry can be) this felt instead like a pleasure, with the words drifting and rising, ringing and singing, and creating pictures and feelings as I found myself completely tied up in Beth's world. Although there are many books of poetry that I enjoy, I've never read a novel written entirely in free verse before, and I did feel a little trepidation as I began. I have a colleague who declared just today that basically, nobody likes poetry! I disagreed with this statement, but I must admit I wasn't entirely sure how I would feel about reading this book. Mouse the dog, however, has other ideas about this! With the entrance of Mouse into her life there comes, also, Alice and slowly Alice brings both light and love to Beth's world. We see Beth dealing with her mental illness, locked away in her own, personal 'safe' world where she feels she can maintain her happiness by remaining isolated. The Space Between tells the story of Beth, over the course of a year. If you enjoy, or even just tolerate, free verse then you should definitely give this beautiful book a try. Summary: Very unusual, raw, sensitive and honest.
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