The Space Between the Stars
Anne Corlett
UK Publisher: Macmillan
Release Date: 1st June, 2017
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Synopsis:
Jamie Allenby wakes, alone, and realises her fever has broken. But could everyone she knows be dead? Months earlier, Jamie had left her partner Daniel, mourning the miscarriage of their baby. She’d just had to get away, so took a job on a distant planet. Then the virus hit.
Jamie survived as it swept through our far-flung colonies. Now she feels desperate and isolated, until she receives a garbled message from Earth. If someone from her past is still alive – perhaps Daniel – she knows she must find a way to return.
She meets others seeking Earth, and their ill-matched group will travel across space to achieve their dream. But they’ll clash with survivors intent on repeating humanity’s past mistakes, threatening their precious fresh start. Jamie will also get a second chance at happiness. But can she escape her troubled past, to embrace a hopeful future?
This was pitched to me as: a unique dystopian fiction novel; a dramatic road-trip through the stars and an novel with an exploration of the very human tendency to look for patterns and meaning in our lives.
I am yet, to still, write a review for this one, but I had to get involved. Here's an extract and the chance to win a copy:
From Chapter One
She walked over to the cupboard. Underwear, a pair of jeans. She pulled them on. No T-shirts.
The washing line. She’d been hanging out laundry when the first spasms had sent her to her knees, and then, by slow increments, to the medicine drawer.
She stood still. Until she went outside, this could all just be a game of what if?
Nought point nought nought nought one.
‘Shut up.’ Her voice sounded thin and rusty, and she swore, another harsh scrape of sound, then opened the door.
The sun was high overhead, the sky its usual denim blue, fading to smoky marl at the horizon. Outside the croft a halfline of washing swayed in the breeze. At one end, a bed sheet trailed from a single peg, the line sagging under its weight. The laundry basket was on its side, her clothes streaked and crumpled in the dirt.
She realised she’d instinctively wrapped the towel around her before stepping outside, just as though one of the farmhands might wander by with a casual wolf whistle.
Little things, she thought. It was too easy to forget, to fall back into past habits, paying too much attention to all the tiny, insignificant things.
She kept the towel clamped against her sides until she’d unpegged a grey T-shirt, and pulled it over her head. Her boots were abandoned by the door, as usual, and she sat to lace them up.
The birds had scattered over to the boundary fence, their quarrel muted by distance. The turbine turned quietly, and the cattle grumbled from the barn. She stood up, stretching her cramped limbs, forcing herself to look around. The main house was still and silent and she turned away, towards the open land beyond the station fences. A couple of faint scraps of cloud drifted over the hills, carrying a vague promise of rain.
Her thoughts were spiralling out, beyond the simple fact of the warm breeze and clear sun. This world had long growing seasons, regular rainfall, a simple infrastructure. It would be an easy enough place to survive, if surviving became all there was.
No.
The door of the main house was closed, but the curtains were open. Someone could be looking out right now. Or perhaps someone had heard her. Maybe they were stumbling to the window as she stood there.
But she didn’t move.
There was a rumble from the barn. If the Calgarth herd had been milkers, they’d have been protesting their swollen neglect long and loud. But these were breeders, and their complaints were probably focused on being barn-bound and out of feed. If those basic needs were met, they wouldn’t be troubled by the decimation of the human world.
She turned away from those empty windows, and walked down to the barn, swinging back the bar that kept the cattle from the yard. She found the herd outside, gathered in the shade of the back wall, near a trough of greenish water and a pile of fodder spilled from an upended bin. The scattered feed spoke of someone using their last strength to make sure the herd had enough to last until . . . for a while.
Her heart felt small and hard, as if her illness had turned it into something other than flesh. She hadn’t spent much time with Jim Cranwell, who ran the farm, despite being his resident veterinarian, but he’d always been courteous. She’d had more to do with his grandchildren, who’d run in and out of the barn, clambering between stalls and treating the cattle like oversized pets. At first she’d wished they would leave her alone. She found their constant questions distracting, and she veered between patronising, oversimplified answers and curt, too-adult responses. But she’d got used to their presence, even playing the odd game with them, although she always tired of it before they did.
She’d have to go round the station and prop all the gates open. There was a stream near the boundary fence, so the cows would have water. She wasn’t sure what to do about the bulls. If she left them roaming free, they’d fight, but if she kept them separate, there’d be no new calves. What happened when there was no prospect of anything beyond this generation? What happened when . . .
She gripped the edge of the door frame, her breath growing ragged. There’d be other people who’d beaten the odds. She had to find them. Until she did, these thoughts would keep piling up until she was crushed beneath them.
She stood for a moment, breathing slowly, trying to think about nothing but the blue of the sky and the curve of the hills. Then she turned and walked, slowly and heavily, towards the silent house.
The Space Between The Stars by Anne Corlett is published by Pan Macmillan, 1 June 2017, £12.99, Hardback.
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- Closes 05/06/2017 (5th June, 2017)
Anne Corlett has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and has won a number of awards for her short stories, including the H. E. Bates Award. She works as a criminal solicitor and freelance writer, and lives with her partner and three young boys in Somerset. The Space Between The Stars is her first novel.
31.05.2017- Welcome to day 5.
