The Space Between Time – Review
Welcome to the month-long mega tour for Charlie Laidlaw’s newest book, The Space Between Time, released on June 20th. There is a host of fantastic bloggers participating, who will be posting interviews, excerpts, reviews, and other exclusive content. I’ve included a list at the end of this post, so you can see what others think, and find out more about the author.
Additionally, there are lots of prizes to win, so be sure to enter at the bottom!
Genre: Contemporary Fiction/ Dark Comedy
There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth…
Emma Maria Rossini appears to be the luckiest girl in the world. She’s the daughter of a beautiful and loving mother, and her father is one of the most famous film actors of his generation. She’s also the granddaughter of a rather eccentric and obscure Italian astrophysicist.
But as her seemingly charmed life begins to unravel, and Emma experiences love and tragedy, she ultimately finds solace in her once-derided grandfather’s Theorem on the universe.
The Space Between Time is humorous and poignant and offers the metaphor that we are all connected, even to those we have loved and not quite lost.
Add to Goodreads.
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Excerpt
Timescale for a Closed Universe
It wasn’t an afternoon that I like to remember, and not just because of my shrieking tantrum. Once I’d calmed down, Mum told me I’d been very silly, because it was all make-believe on a cinema screen. I reminded her that she’d cried when Bambi’s mum died, and that was a film and a cartoon. Mum said that it wasn’t the same thing at all. But I wasn’t being silly because I wasn’t old enough to know the difference between pretence and reality.
Dad had looked pretty dead on the screen. The blood on his chest had looked pretty real. If it had been a different dead person, I would have been OK. Children don’t really know where make-believe ends and the real world begins and, partly because of who I am, it’s remained pretty hazy ever since. I also don’t like to remember that film because it was the moment when I realised that our lives were about to change, and I didn’t know if that would be a good thing.
Sounds strange, yes? Here’s something stranger: I am a child of the sea, I sometimes think, and have done ever since we first moved to live beside it. I feel subject to its vagaries and tempers, with its foaming margins framed against a towering sky. I am familiar with its unchanging mood swings. That’s how I like things; I find the familiar comforting. I find change threatening.
I am the daughter of someone who, not long after that ghastly cinema outing, became one of the most famous actors of his generation and, importantly for me, the granddaughter of a rather brilliant but obscure physics professor. But despite their overachievements, I have inherited no aptitude for mathematics and my father positively hated the idea of his only offspring following in his thespian footsteps. He knew how cruel and badly paid the profession could be. But I still look up to my grandfather, and think of his ludicrous moustache with affection.
Gramps once told me that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on Earth. Just think of all those sandpits, beaches and deserts! That’s an awful lot of stars. He then told me, his only grandchild, that I was his shining star, which was a nice thing to say and why I remember him talking about sand and stars. On clear nights, with stars twinkling, I often think about him.
I still believe in my grandfather, and admire his stoic acceptance in the face of professional disdain, because I believe in the unique power of ideas, right or wrong, and that it’s our thoughts that shape our existence. We are who we believe ourselves to be.
I gave up believing in my father long ago, because speaking other people’s words and ideas seemed like a lame excuse for a job, even if he was paid millions, and met the Queen on several occasions. She must have liked him because she awarded him an OBE for services to film, theatre and charity. Charity! Who the hell told the Queen that?
I stopped believing in him one Christmas Day, a long time ago, when he simply didn’t turn up. It wasn’t his presents that I missed, or even his presence, but the warm, fuzzy feeling of being important to him. During that day of absence and loss I concluded that his wife and daughter couldn’t much matter to him, otherwise he’d have made a bigger effort to get home. That Christmas Day, my father was simply somewhere else, probably in a bar, immaculately dressed, his hair slicked back, the object of male envy and the centre of every woman’s attention for miles around.
In that respect, Dad was more tomcat than father, except that by then his territory, his fame, stretched around the globe. I know this: by then he had a Golden Globe to prove it. He gushed pheromones from every pore, squirting attraction in every direction, and even women with a poor sense of smell could sniff him out.
I feel mostly Scottish, but am a little bit Italian. It explains my name, Emma Maria Rossini; my dark complexion, black hair, the slightly long nose, and thin and lanky body. Obese I am not, and will never be, however much pasta I eat, and I eat lots. It also explains my temper, according to some people, although I don’t agree with them, and my brown cow’s eyes, as an almost-boyfriend once described them, thinking he was paying me a compliment, before realising that he had just become an ex-almost-boyfriend.
But mostly I am a child of the sea. That’s what happens if you live for long enough by its margins: it becomes a part of you; its mood echoing your mood, until you know what it’s thinking, and it knows everything about you. That’s what it feels like when I contemplate its tensile strength and infinite capacity for change. On calm flat days in North Berwick, with small dinghies marooned on the glassy water, and loud children squealing in its shallows, it can make me anxious and cranky.
The sea, on those days, seems soulless and tired, bereft of spirit. But on wilder days, the beach deserted, or with only a hardy dog-walker venturing across the sand, with large waves thundering in, broaching and breaking, then greedily sucking back pebbles into the foam, I feel energised: this is what the sea enjoys, a roaring irresponsibility, and I share in its pleasure. We are all children of the sea, I sometimes think, or we should be – even those who have never seen an ocean or tasted its saltiness; I can stand for hours and contemplate its far horizons, lost within myself, sharing its passion. In the Firth of Forth is the ebb and flow of my past and my existence, wrapped tight against the west wind. It is what I am, placid and calm, or loud and brash.
So, the excerpt gives you a flavour of the book. But what did I think? Well, for a first book review, I picked a good one. This is a story which is hard to break away from. The author has created such well defined characters, that at times I found myself using a search engine just to be certain that they weren’t real people.
In a sense, they are real people. Charlie Laidlaw clearly feels for his creations. He understands them in the way a parent might understand their children, and his compassion towards them is evident. They are human, and through the words on the pages, their flaws and vulnerabilities come alive. Because he cares, I cared too. I wanted to follow the story of Emma, the child of the sea. In the mirror of her life, were reflected some of my own experiences. My emotions as I followed the story rose and fell, so engaged was I with the characters. Although Emma seems to have some of the privileges which others can only dream of, when the layers are stripped back, she is left exposed. As vulnerable to nurture and nature as anyone else. The chapters of her life come together to shape the adult she becomes. As her story progresses, so her dialogue matures from girl to woman. Throughout, her grandfather’s theorem draws together three generations of family in love, in loss, and in life.
If you enjoy a character led narrative, which will engage your imagination while challenging your emotions, I absolutely commend this book to you. It is certainly one which has settled in to stay with me, and is a book I look forward to reading again.
If you like what you’ve read so far, you can purchase a copy of ‘The Space Between Time’ here.
Or see below for an opportunity to win a copy (enter by 30 June).
About the Author
I was born in Paisley, central Scotland, which wasn’t my fault. That week, Eddie Calvert with Norrie Paramor and his Orchestra were Top of the Pops, with Oh, Mein Papa, as sung by a young German woman remembering her once-famous clown father. That gives a clue to my age, not my musical taste.
I was brought up in the west of Scotland and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. I still have the scroll, but it’s in Latin, so it could say anything.
I then worked briefly as a street actor, baby photographer, puppeteer and restaurant dogsbody before becoming a journalist. I started in Glasgow and ended up in London, covering news, features and politics. I interviewed motorbike ace Barry Sheene, Noel Edmonds threatened me with legal action and, because of a bureaucratic muddle, I was ordered out of Greece.
I then took a year to travel round the world, visiting 19 countries. Highlights included being threatened by a man with a gun in Dubai, being given an armed bodyguard by the PLO in Beirut (not the same person with a gun), and visiting Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave in Samoa. What I did for the rest of the year I can’t quite remember
Surprisingly, I was approached by a government agency to work in intelligence, which just shows how shoddy government recruitment was back then. However, it turned out to be very boring and I don’t like vodka martini.
Craving excitement and adventure, I ended up as a PR consultant, which is the fate of all journalists who haven’t won a Pulitzer Prize, and I’ve still to listen to Oh, Mein Papa.
I am married with two grown-up children and live in central Scotland. And that’s about it.
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Blog Tour Schedule
June 3rd
Reads & Reels (Review) http://www.readsandreels.com
The Writer’s Alley (Review) https://www.jacobrundle.com
Yearwood La Novela (Excerpt) http://yearwooddailybookreview.wordpress.com
June 4th
Tranquil Dreams (Review) http://klling.wordpress.com
Little Tinklabee (Review) https://littletinkablee.com/
Jun 5th
Jessica Belmont (Review) https://jessicabelmont.wordpress.com/
June 6th
Cup of Toast (Review) https://cupoftoast.co.uk
Gwendalyn’s Books (Review) http://gwendalynbooks.wordpress.com
June 7th
Breakeven Books (Interview) https://breakevenbooks.com
June 8th
Didi Oviatt (Excerpt) https://didioviatt.wordpress.com
June 9th
Life at 17 (Review) https://lifeat17.wordpress.com
June 10th
Where Dragons Reside (Excerpt) https://kernerangelina.live/
Inked and Blonde (Review) http://www.inkedandblondeonline.co.uk
Go By the Book (Review) http://gobythebookblog.wordpress.com
Novel Lives (Review) https://novellives.com/author/literacybatmanlives/
June 11th
Valerie’s Musings – https://valeriesmusings.com/
June 12th
Misty’s Book Space – http://mistysbookspace.wordpress.com
June 13th
Brianne’s Book Reviews (Review) http://briannesbookreviewsvideo.wordpress.com
June 14th
Love Books Group – http://lovebooksgroup.blog
June 15th
Wrong Side of Forty (Review) http://wrongsideoffortyuk.wordpress.com
The Eclectic Review – http://eclecticreview.wordpress.com
June 16th
The Bookworm Drinketh (Review) http://thebookwormdrinketh.wordpress.com/
The Reading Chemist (Review) https://thereadingchemist.com/
June 17th
Erin Decker (Excerpt) http://erindeckerblog.wordpress.com
Reading Nook (Excerpt) http://readingnook84.wordpress.com
June 19th
Banshee Horror Blog (review) www.bansheeirishhorrorblog.com
The Faerie Review (Review) http://www.thefaeriereview.com
June 20th
The Magic of Wor(l)ds (Interview) http://themagicofworlds.wordpress.com
June 21st
Sawdust & Spoons (Review) http://sawdustandspoons.com/
June 22nd
Tsarina Press – https://www.tsarinapress.com
June 23rd
The Hufflepuff Nerdette (Review) https://thehufflepuffnerdette.wordpress.com/
June 25th
*Yearwood Novela – http://yearwooddailybookreview.wordpress.com
Kim Knight (Review & Interview) http://www.kimknightauthor.com
Quirky Cat’s Fat Stacks (Review) https://quirkycatsfatstacks.com/
June 26th
The Photographers Way (Review) https://www.thephotographersway.org
June 27th
Daily Waffle (Excerpt) http://www.dailywaffle.co.uk/
I’m Into Books (Excerpt) https://www.imintobooks.com/
June 28th
Scarlett Readz & Runz (Interview) https://scarlettreadzandrunz.com/
B is for Book Review (Review) https://bforbookreview.wordpress.com
Blog Tour Organized By:R&R Book Tours
