Book Review: Alone with you in the Ether

Synopsis: 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?

My two cents worth:

Aldo and Regan, the main characters of this rather simple, yet perplexing story of boy meets girl are the most confusing and mentally challenging individuals I've yet to encounter within a story. The author defines the book as a 'love story', but do not fool yourself into thinking there will be romance or the usual telling of lust and evolving relationship normality. This is a strange, and for lack of a better word, complex enmeshing of polar opposite characters that are magnetised to the other's eccentricities. 

The novel explores the evolution of thought as two individuals with their own unique mental struggles somehow define a new language in order to see the world through the same magnified glass. Unpredictable behaviours in both Aldo and Regan ignite curiosity, passion, and shared intellectual intelligence which within themselves unlocks some stability in their otherwise tumultuous thoughts and past patterns of behaviour.

I found this story intriguing and all together just plain different from anything I've ever read before. Even the story itself moved from being within a conversation between characters, to almost hovering above the ghost of history's past and re-living that particular moment. Did I enjoy this story? No, I don't think I actually did. The writing was good, the plot average at best, but the characters and their idiosyncrasies really set the novel apart from other stories within the 'love' genre.

I was intrigued, which I suppose is as much a positive as is not actually enjoying the story overall. I will say this is a very clever author with a very unique perspective, and if nothing else, this book should be well and truly celebrated for breaking the mold of conformity and arousing curiosity within its reader.

3 out of 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐

Kristy :)