- Published: 2 April 2019
- ISBN: 9780143773313
- Imprint: Penguin
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 304
- RRP: $38.00
The Gulf Between
- Published: 2 April 2019
- ISBN: 9780143773313
- Imprint: Penguin
- Format: Trade Paperback
- Pages: 304
- RRP: $38.00
. . . a wrenching, emotional, tension-filled story about family secrets, cultural expectations and hidden corruptions. . . . How Julia winds up separated for decades from her son and how she ends up alone in New Zealand (a place where she is, as she tells us, "a better version" of herself) far from all those she loves and holds dear, are the mysteries that this compelling novel unravels for us.
Maggie trapp, Weekend Herald
This novel is hard to put down as it is so full of menace. While I sometimes questioned Julia's decisions and her continued insistence on staying in Italy, she is convincingly a character of her time. The mystery that links the incident in 1994 with the family's struggles in the 1950s is resolved through a gut-wrenching twist. There is heartbreak, horror, determination and sacrifice in this novel. A fast-paced, engaging read.
Louise Ward, Napier Courier
THE GULF BETWEEN is a slow burner, suspense thriller of the deceptively laid back variety. From the opening chapter there's something hypnotically understated about the way that the story of Julia is woven. . . . It heads, languidly for the opening chapters, towards a darker, more sinister place reasonably quickly, but beware, in the early stages the details are sketched out, the suspense coming from not knowing, more than knowing. Right up until a bombshell of an ending, that probably with a bit of clearheaded regard you might have seen coming, but the level of involvement, and investment in Julia's current telling of her story, meant that this reader was looking here, when she probably could have been seeing things over there. . . . It exposes the potential of misplaced trust, and how your belief in others can go very wrong. And the price that some people pay for choices made.
Karen Chisholm, Kiwicrime.blogspot.com