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A review by rashellnicole
Alone with You in the Ether by Olivie Blake
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This book cracked me in two. Two unlikeable characters meet by happenstance in an art museum, going about their daily lives. A thief and a mathematician who thinks the key to time travel is bees. How much more enticing of a premise is that?
Regan makes rash decisions and lives life by the seat of her pants. She doesn't particularly like her boyfriend, Marc (and neither do her parents), but she keeps him around as long as he's interesting. She uses sex to cope with her inability to be genuine and connect with others.
Aldo is different. Introvert, theoretical mathematician by pure coincidence (it was the one subject that continued to hold his interest over the years), doesn't connect well with others because he doesn't care to. He's kind, but to the point in every interaction, so he's disliked by many people (especially his students). And he's trying to solve the problem that is time travel by studying bees and their hexagonal patterns.
They meet and agree to six conversations. Unsurprisingly, they're life-altering.
They open up to each other over the course of these conversations and they both get closer to understanding what makes the other person tick. In short, they fall in love. Like the death of star, the relationship burns quickly until a fateful evening when it explodes. They can't help but gravitate back to each other, though. It ends on a rather satisfying note: they're both average humans to people, but are everything to each other.
They seem to feed into each other's obsessive qualities and it doesn't feel healthy at any point. But god, it's enticing. It's easy to see from both of their perspectives and put yourself in their positions - really understand what they see in each other, even as ruined, tragic people. Several times it made me fantasize about being in a similar situation. Definitely had to check myself emotionally throughout the book.
This book made me tear up, struggle and spiral out a bit, so here are some of my favorite quotes and passages that fucked with me (not always in the best way).
"When you learn a new word, you suddenly see it everywhere. The mind comforts itself by believing this to be coincidence but it isn't - it's ignorance falling away. Your future self will always see what your present self is blind to. This is the problem with mortality, which is in fact a problem of time." (p. 31)
"In her experience, curiosity about a person was never a good sign. Curiosity was unspeakably worse and far more addicting than sexual attraction. Curiosity usually meant a kindling of something highly flammable, which wasn't at all what Regan wanted from this." (p. 43)
“Fascinating, really, to see what she saw. Bewildering that she could turn something in her mind into something real. Practical magic.
He wandered to the hall closet, noting the places she’d been.
Here. Here. There.
His mind retraced the shape of her touch, replicating its patterns and shapes; linking observations together. The speed of her hesitation. The force of her breath. He turned her over in his head, facts and details and observations, wrapping his mind around her the way his fingers had done.” (p. 97)
“That its reflex never died; the little song of Don’t go, just stay. Settle over me like the tide, cover me like a blanket, wrap around me like the sun.
Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.” (p. 105)
"I want you to say everything, anything. I want to have your thoughts, I want to bottle them, I want to put them in my drawer for safekeeping." (p. 176)
"Yes it does, he doesn't want to be the person she hides from, he wants to be the person she hides with." (p. 177)
"'Sometimes I feel like I"m just waiting for something that will never happen,' he said. 'Like I'm just existing from day to day but will never really matter. I get up in the morning because I have to, because I have to do something or i'm just wasting space, or because if I don't answer the phone my dad will be alone. But it's an effort, it takes work. I have to tell myself, every day, get up. Get up, do this, move like this, talk to people, be normal, try to be social, be nice, be patient. On the inside I just feel like, I don't know, nothing. Like I'm just an algorithm that someone put in place.'" (p. 193)
"When Aldo spoke of Regan his voice had a tendency to change, illumination rising near his cheeks. 'You should see her work,' he would say the same way someone else might have said: Come outside, come look at the stars." (p. 200) I mean really, who doesn't want to be thought of this way by someone they love?
"He would come to share her joys until he could no longer separate them from his own, and then one day, maybe turning to her at a party or rushing to ask in a text message, he would say: What's that thing I like? And she would know the answer. She would know everything. Eventually, all the answers to all that he was would be cradled in the palms of her hands." (p. 222)
"People thought addiction was a craving, but the difference was this: Cravings were wishes that could be satisfied, but compulsions were needs that must be met." (p. 237)
Regan makes rash decisions and lives life by the seat of her pants. She doesn't particularly like her boyfriend, Marc (and neither do her parents), but she keeps him around as long as he's interesting. She uses sex to cope with her inability to be genuine and connect with others.
Aldo is different. Introvert, theoretical mathematician by pure coincidence (it was the one subject that continued to hold his interest over the years), doesn't connect well with others because he doesn't care to. He's kind, but to the point in every interaction, so he's disliked by many people (especially his students). And he's trying to solve the problem that is time travel by studying bees and their hexagonal patterns.
They meet and agree to six conversations. Unsurprisingly, they're life-altering.
They seem to feed into each other's obsessive qualities and it doesn't feel healthy at any point. But god, it's enticing. It's easy to see from both of their perspectives and put yourself in their positions - really understand what they see in each other, even as ruined, tragic people. Several times it made me fantasize about being in a similar situation. Definitely had to check myself emotionally throughout the book.
This book made me tear up, struggle and spiral out a bit, so here are some of my favorite quotes and passages that fucked with me (not always in the best way).
"In her experience, curiosity about a person was never a good sign. Curiosity was unspeakably worse and far more addicting than sexual attraction. Curiosity usually meant a kindling of something highly flammable, which wasn't at all what Regan wanted from this." (p. 43)
“Fascinating, really, to see what she saw. Bewildering that she could turn something in her mind into something real. Practical magic.
He wandered to the hall closet, noting the places she’d been.
Here. Here. There.
His mind retraced the shape of her touch, replicating its patterns and shapes; linking observations together. The speed of her hesitation. The force of her breath. He turned her over in his head, facts and details and observations, wrapping his mind around her the way his fingers had done.” (p. 97)
“That its reflex never died; the little song of Don’t go, just stay. Settle over me like the tide, cover me like a blanket, wrap around me like the sun.
Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.” (p. 105)
"I want you to say everything, anything. I want to have your thoughts, I want to bottle them, I want to put them in my drawer for safekeeping." (p. 176)
"Yes it does, he doesn't want to be the person she hides from, he wants to be the person she hides with." (p. 177)
"'Sometimes I feel like I"m just waiting for something that will never happen,' he said. 'Like I'm just existing from day to day but will never really matter. I get up in the morning because I have to, because I have to do something or i'm just wasting space, or because if I don't answer the phone my dad will be alone. But it's an effort, it takes work. I have to tell myself, every day, get up. Get up, do this, move like this, talk to people, be normal, try to be social, be nice, be patient. On the inside I just feel like, I don't know, nothing. Like I'm just an algorithm that someone put in place.'" (p. 193)
"When Aldo spoke of Regan his voice had a tendency to change, illumination rising near his cheeks. 'You should see her work,' he would say the same way someone else might have said: Come outside, come look at the stars." (p. 200) I mean really, who doesn't want to be thought of this way by someone they love?
"He would come to share her joys until he could no longer separate them from his own, and then one day, maybe turning to her at a party or rushing to ask in a text message, he would say: What's that thing I like? And she would know the answer. She would know everything. Eventually, all the answers to all that he was would be cradled in the palms of her hands." (p. 222)
"People thought addiction was a craving, but the difference was this: Cravings were wishes that could be satisfied, but compulsions were needs that must be met." (p. 237)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness
Moderate: Addiction, Self harm, and Toxic relationship