The Space

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Patrick Borden is a 32-year-old Vancouverite who has majored in
“everything but business.” After a serious bout with illness during
his 20th year, Borden’s “outlook on life” changed and he “found
himself pouring out his experiences onto paper. A loosely
autobiographical series of chapters took shape over the course of four
years, evolving into The Space.” Unfortunately, Borden’s experiences
seem to begin and end with heroin.

Each of the book’s three main characters transmits a different side
of the author. Danny is a young addict, dependent on the government’s
dispensing program for his daily dose. Michael is a sometime university
student whose addiction is leftist dogma; a self-styled anarchist, he
enjoys the company of like-minded campus intellectuals. Angie is hooked
on the designer drug “Hyperbliss,” which Danny dislikes so much.
Borden does try to bring these three social misfits together, but once
again turns to junk to make a point. The novel ends as it begins:
without redemption, floating in a diffident, drug-induced space.