Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake

“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.”

-Alone With You In The Ether

Every time I read a book by Olivie Blake I fall further in love. Her writing style is gorgeous and so unlike anything I have ever read, her books leave me in a state of awe, brimming with emotion. Her short story collection, Januaries, consumed me entirely with the gorgeous prose, captivating characters and stories that took me into another time, place and world. I had started Alone With You in the Ether a few months ago on audio actually. The audio is incredible for this book, so beautifully done. But, I have a bad habit of spacing out sometimes when I listen to a book and I didn’t want to miss a second of this one so I decided to start from the beginning and read it instead.

This book is about finding your person. The person who makes life vibrant with color and light. The one you suddenly crave like air, think of constantly and realize you want to rebuild your life around. Aldo is a mathematician, currently a doctoral student who also teaches. His life is the same every day and he has recently taken up the study of time. Regan is an artist who is not painting. She is currently giving tours at the Art Institute of Chicago, and she knows that compared to her perfect sister Madeline that her parents do not think she has her life figured out.

Aldo and Regan have a chance meeting inside the Art Institute one day, and Aldo is intrigued by Regan in a way he can’t explain. He asks Regan to agree to six conversations with him in which they can uncover the truth about the other. Regan, also intrigued and very bored with her own life, agrees. Why six? It’s the bees.

What starts as just a few conversations becomes something more, as Aldo and Regan deal with the realities of their own lives and struggles but also realize they both have a place in the other’s heart. This book ripped me apart in the best way because it’s been such a long time that I read such raw emotion on the page. This was seriously beautiful and gorgeous and a testament to the fact that no matter what life throws at you, no matter how hard it gets, sometimes all it takes is a single person to make you realize how beautiful life can really be. I loved this story with all of my heart and as always, look forward to my next read by Olivie Blake.

“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.”

Alone With You in the Ether