#BookReview ‘Alone With You In The Ether’ by Olivie Blake

About the book…

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?

Huge thanks to Eleanor at Pan Macmillan for the chance to read Olivie Blake’s newest novella, ‘Alone With You In The Ether’, via Netgalley. It is available in hardcover and e-book formats, from Tor Books, and I was delighted to have this opportunity as I read, and loved, ‘The Atlas Six’

I looked up the meanin g of ether, having a tangential understanding of what it was, and came across a definition from a physics perspective that completely sums up the plot, in my humble opinion.

Ether is considered a compound wherein 2 molecules are bound to each other by an atom of oxygen, and it seemed the perfect description for Regan and Aldo who transcend the time and space which they are in to become bound together, through the process of 6 conversations. However, had it not been for the way their life and time was structured, such a meeting could not have been initiated to lead to the conversations between them, where they connect, fall in love , and move into a space and reality that both belongs to, but is separate from what we recognise.

It’s a long winded way of saying this is a earth defying connection between 2 people who float in a sea of misunderstanding until they meet each other. Through exploring each other’s lives, on a background of literary techniques which makes you feel like a voyeur, or an audience member in a show, Olivie Blake makes you feel this intimate sense of belonging to Regan and Aldo, making you the oxygen atom that binds these molecules to yourself, holds it within, and treasures the experience.

I admit to finding it difficult to start with as I wasn’t sure what was going on, and feeling shaky with the concept as it was written-I didn’t know if it was a formatting issue in the e-book I was gifted via Netgalley or if it was the author’s intention, so I stuck with it and I think it makes for a unique and unusual reading experience. It also reflects the fractured mind sets of both protagonists whose realities’ are heading in multiple directions at once.

What you get to experience as a reader is sublime and unforgettable, and illustrates why Olivie Blake is making waves in the world of publishing , and will continue to do so! She has quickly been added to my list of must buy books by must buy authors-who needs food anyway?

About the author…

About the author…