A solitary boy in a family of independent, unconventional women, Toby Hawk lives in a small, closed world that consists of school and surfing the Internet. His mother, Isobel, a painter on the brink of commercial success, is only fifteen years his senior and the two share an unusually intimate bond. But everything changes when Isobel takes up with Roehm, a fascinating and enigmatic scientist. As he begins his slow dance of courtship and seduction, alienating mother from son, their world becomes unstable and duplicitous. Toby turns to the Web for clues about his mother s hauntingly irresistible, predatory lover -- and the answers he finds transform his life.
An eerie psychological ghost story with echoes of Faust, Freud, and Frankenstein, The Deadly Space Between is a disturbing tale of Oedipal passions -- a rich and dark exploration of sexual ambiguity and longing.