Eleanor and Leena meet in an elevator, beginning a whirlwind romance that encapsulates love's maddening hold, breathtaking delights and lifelong endurance.
A women's studies major driven toward political activism, Eleanor Suzuki starts dating Leena Shah, a "hyperfocused" premed student who is "gorgeous and cool and on her way to sainthood." Committed to "romance and drama and excitement," Eleanor comes out to her Japanese American father and Jewish mother, but Leena, set to study abroad in South Africa, lets go of Eleanor: "Let's say, this was fun." Six years later, chance reunites them. On a straightforward track--public health school, not med school; dating an Indian man, not a woman--Leena welcomes Eleanor's presence as a friend. Yet as her parents await her engagement, Leena longs for the "lighter, freer time" she and Eleanor once shared. And though Eleanor doesn't want to ruin Leena's life plans, she thinks of the electrifying past that could have been her future.
Spanning 13 years, Emily Hashimoto's debut novel A World Between is the story of two women's lives colliding ungracefully in an approximation of a dance, continuously moving together and apart. It explores the tumult women face over what life to lead. Via immersive prose, Hashimoto lays the rails of cultural pressure directing Leena's "march toward the mandap." For Eleanor, Hashimoto invokes feminist bell hooks, whose Communion inspires the woman to live truthfully. Their uncertain relationship is thrillingly imperfect--never cloying or sappy. Punctuated by the crushing heartbreaks and soaring splendors of intimacy and vulnerability, A World Between depicts the concessions and transformations necessary to wrangle insecurities and seek happiness. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer