Relayed in first person narrative, Jace reveals himself to be a complex and richly layered character whose attempts to fill in the spaces in his notebook reward him with something more valuable than what he initially expected to find in Mexico- a sense of identity, and resolution. There are also spaces between the members of his family, who are speaking more clearly with their spaces than with the words spoken out loud, and those of Kate and Connor, two young people Jace meets in Mexico whose spaces contain secrets that are equally revealing and startling.
Jace is riddled with guilt over the death of his brother, instinctively knowing that there was something important in those spaces, and he blames himself for not filling them in.
Jace's younger brother, Lucas, is autistic and requires special attention, and that leaves Jace in the middle, filling the space between the siblings.Īs secrets are revealed, a second, and equally important meaning can be derived from the title, suggesting that the space between is the space between the words the unspoken secrets, which are destroying his family. Prior to Jace's older brother's suicide, (which is alluded to, but not fully revealed until later in the book), Stephan was the superstar athlete and student, with everything going for him. All I could think about was how much it must have cost Stefan to tell her what he did, how much it costs any of us to show others who we really are.Įn route to Mexico, to fulfill his 18th birthday wish of losing his virginity, Jace struggles with a school writing assignment for his grade 12 English class and learns along the way that life is never as straightforward as it seems, and secrets, like the ocean tide, have a way of washing up on shore and unearthing something long since buried.Īptly named The Space Between, readers will find many connections to Jace's story, including his feeling of being an invisible middle child.
That evening by the pool as she told me about Stefan, I wanted to reach out to my mother, wanted to tell her what she needed me to say: that she wasn't to blame for what happened, and that she'd done the best she could for him.
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