Book Review: Alone With You in the Ether

Book Review: Alone With You in the Ether

Author: Olivie Blake

Rating: 3.75/5

Pages: 262

Publisher: TOR (originally self-published)

Would Recommend: Yes

 

Alone With You in the Ether is a beautiful book about two broken characters who find each other. They don’t complete each other. They don’t enable each other. They come together to exist together, and maybe be better people because of the other.

From Goodreads:

CHICAGO, SOMETIME—

Two people meet in the Art Institute by chance. Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist, undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. By the end of the story, these things will still be true. But this is not a story about endings.

For Regan, people are predictable and tedious, including and perhaps especially herself. She copes with the dreariness of existence by living impulsively, imagining a new, alternate timeline being created in the wake of every rash decision.

To Aldo, the world feels disturbingly chaotic. He gets through his days by erecting a wall of routine: a backbeat of rules and formulas that keep him going. Without them, the entire framework of his existence would collapse.

For Regan and Aldo, life has been a matter of resigning themselves to the blueprints of inevitability—until the two meet. Could six conversations with a stranger be the variable that shakes up the entire simulation?

***Minor spoilers ahead!

Regan and Aldo’s chemistry is palpable. Their chemistry and connection was the reason I wanted to this book, and it was the reason why I continued reading.

I mean, it’s a great book regardless. The language is beautiful. It’s deep and poetic, and the way Blake has written this story is simply magnificent.

Although, I do have to say, that I thought it was very pretentious at times (more than I would have liked, otherwise I would have given it a higher rating). But its pretentiousness also fit well with the two characters and with the tone of the book.

The book is experimental. At times, it’s set up as a play. The characters look into the distance towards the “audience” and there are narrators on stage that take us deeper into the story and the characters’ minds.

One of the scenes that has stuck with me the most is at the beginning of the book when Aldo is alone, in the “ether,” if you will (although not explicitly written).  Not here, not there, not anywhere in particular. Just in the ether. There’s nothing else except for him, his joint, and most importantly, his thoughts.

It’s a great set up.

But it kind of feels that this experimental storytelling, the play in particular, is forgotten as the story progresses to give room to the pretense. Then the experiment pops up again almost at random—at least long enough for me to have forgotten it was a thing in the first place until I’m reading it again.

I wish it had been a bigger role in the writing. I might have given the four stars if it had.

Another thing that brought down my rating is the fact that I found it a little bit hard to believe that two people would agree, almost instantly, to have six conversations to learn more about each other.

Let me clarify: I love the premise. I think it’s great and it was one of the reasons why I picked up the book in the first place. Even the execution of the conversations was amazing. The conversations intriguing. They flowed and it showed how stimulating Regan and Aldo found each other.

My single note is how easily Aldo proposed the idea, and how easily Regan accepted. I suppose I was expecting a little bit of more tension. More build up.

But those notes aside, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

One of my favorite scenes is when Regan and Aldo go to church together for the first time. They’re sitting next to each other and there’s a lot of tension between them. And then, Aldo starts doing math on Regan’s skin. It’s such an intimate scene. So electrifying.

Another one of the highlights from this book is when Regan would “hear” or talk to herself through her mother’s voice, or through Marc’s, or through Aldo’s.

There’s a particular scene when Regan and Aldo visit Regan’s parents. There’s a bit of a “monologue” from Regan’s mom. She’s going on and on about how Regan’s messing up her life (same as usual).

But then there’s a very smooth transition from Regan’s mom’s voice to Aldo’s. Where her mom’s words are harsh and cruel, Aldo’s are caring—loving.

But there’s no indication that these are spoken words, which I’ve taken the liberty to say that these are voices that have invaded Regan’s thoughts.

There are times when her thoughts are not her thoughts, not even in the ether.

This worked really well and it gave us so much more insight into Regan’s psyche than just telling about her relationships, or showing us in the traditional sense.

As the story progresses, we see that Regan’s health starts to improve. Then it worsens. Then it improves. It’s a cycle.

Regan battles with her mental health, and Blake has captured the cyclical imbalances that we may go through for long periods of our lives.

There were times when I doubted that the characters would have their “happy ending.” This was mostly because I knew that this book was a portrait of two characters who struggle with the complexities of their brains.

And these struggles make it hard for them to uphold true and vulnerable connections with other people—even to each other.

But then Regan and Aldo find a balance over the unbalanced.

They’re not perfect as individuals. They’re not perfect as a couple.

But they go together.