Olivie Blake’s Alone With You in the Ether “explores what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you’re not broken.” It’s a story about two unique people with obsessive personalities who find themselves drawn together in time. This book is beautifully written; it’s intimate, romantic, magical, and philosophical, but above all, it’s real. It’s truly one of my favorite books, one that I don’t revisit as often as I should. So, dear reader, this article is merely an attempt to persuade you to give this book a chance… It might surprise you.
Retrieved from Goodnotes.
Alone With You in the Ether follows Charlotte Regan (Regan) and Rinaldo Damiani (Aldo). Regan is an artist volunteering at the Art Institute of Chicago. She’s a compulsive liar, has a ton of family issues, and a court-ordered psychiatrist due to counterfeiting foreign bills. Aldo is an anti-social doctoral student of theoretical mathematics (with terrible student reviews) who’s obsessed with symmetry, hexagons, and bees. They make an unlikely pair — between Regan’s bipolar disorder and Aldo’s obsessive tendencies, their relationship is bound to be somewhat unusual.
Retrieved from Pinterest.
Regan and Aldo meet by chance one day in the Art Institute’s armory. Regan wanders in, as she was wont to do after leading a tour at the museum, and stumbles upon a young man sitting cross-legged on the floor — he was the one singularity in a routine that was always the same. They go their separate ways after talking, but this meeting sticks with both of them, each an itch in the other’s back, until they meet at the museum once more.
After that, they agree on having six (hexagons, bees!) conversations. Aldo agrees because he wants to compile the sum of her parts — he’s a mathematician, after all — and Regan because he intrigues her. I’d be doing you a disservice, dear reader, if I told you what happens next; you’d have to read the book to figure it out. Suffice it to say, I think you’d love to find out.
Retrieved from Pinterest.
Now, let me tell you, this book has so many beautiful lines. My physical copy is basically just a block of highlighted pages, and here are some of my favorites! (Don’t worry, they won’t spoil the book)
“Can you love my brain even when it is small? When it is malevolent? When it is violent? Can you love it even when it does not love me?” – Regan
“She is in all of his spaces and all of his thoughts. He contemplates formulas and degrees of rationality and they all turn into her. He thinks about time, which has only recently begun, or at least now feels different. He thinks: the Babylonians were wrong; time is made of her.” – Aldo
“For every sensation Regan could conjure, there was an artist who had beautifully suffered the same.” – Regan
“Instead she thinks: I love him, and for a moment it doesn’t matter whether he loves her back. It is enough to have known that the inside of her chest is more than a place for storage.” – Regan
“Because we have agreed, collectively, that to proceed without knowledge or understanding is a stupid kind of bravery, an impulsive kind of blindness, but that to be alone without wonder or curiosity is to chip away any possible value we might discover in existing.” – Aldo
“Empires have fallen like this, he thinks, but it only makes him want her more, makes him look at his hands and think, My god, what a waste of time doing anything else but holding her.” – Aldo
“There was wonder here, even if Regan no longer saw it … Yes, he would draw it for her, and then she would see it. She would watch it take shape and he would know he’d said it in a way she could understand, and then she would know that even this, with its ordinary features, was wonder and glory, too.” – Aldo
I may have gone a little overboard with the quotes, but I couldn’t help myself! They’re too good! All this to say, please read this book. If you value beautiful writing and circular stories, Alone With You in the Ether is perfect for you, at least I know it was for me. So, dear reader, I hope this article piqued your interest and made you want to give this book a shot! I promise you, it’s so worth it.