Book Review: Alone With You in the Ether
Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake is marketed as a love story – these words are even written on the front cover of my copy. And while love plays a large part in the narrative of this novel, the story was much more an analysis of mental health struggles and how the impacts of these illnesses can fracture out into every crevice of one’s life.
We follow Regan, an art student who lives with bipolar disorder and is serving court-mandated therapy sessions following a forgery scam she was caught up in with an ex. We also have Aldo, a professor and mathematician who is constantly theorising and pondering over the factuality of time travel. When the two characters meet, Aldo is going through the motions and Regan is living with a partner that she fantasises about leaving. Under the agreement that they would have a total of six conversations to get to know each other, their love story begins.
Olivie Blake, the pen name of Alexene Farol Follmuth, writes with a beautiful lyrical quality that reminds me how magical writing can be. Although the shifting perspectives and constantly changing techniques that Blake utilises, such as including a separate narrator at times to comment on the character’s actions, were confusing at first, it does come together at the end. You can’t help but admire Blake’s gift for the writing craft and the lengths she goes to make an average scenario beautiful.
As for the characters, I enjoyed Regan and Aldo separately but felt nervous when they were together – I was gritting my teeth, waiting for the worst to happen. And I say this because they are both deeply flawed characters who really did have the potential to instigate the worst in their relationship. Aldo was a character that seemed lost. It’s mentioned throughout that he has a hard time with life in general and his father implies that he is ‘fragile’. For the most part, Aldo was quiet and seemed to just go along with whatever happened to him. He wasn’t a character with ambition or a real taste for joy, until he meets Regan, who is fast and neurotic and brings him along for the ride.
Regan decides to come off the medication that she takes to manage her mood disorder. As someone who has never had to take medication for a similar mental health issue, I couldn’t relate to the complexities of this; however, I was swept up in the intensities of Regan’s moods. She goes through a period of mania that is incredibly intense to read about. In fact, I felt so enthralled by her moods that the love story took a backseat in the second half of the book; no longer could I focus on it. It became secondary to the real issue at hand which involved Regan’s spiralling thoughts and behaviours. Perhaps that was what Blake wanted.
The passage below was an extraordinary moment where Aldo realises that a relationship with Regan might be too fast for him to endure:
‘With change she had an ongoing affair, and perhaps it had been neutralized for a time with pills and psychotherapy but underneath it all, the little monster that was her soul was clawing for it, and it had been Aldo who’d hauled it out again. He’d unleashed a titan, he’d freed her, fallen in love with her, and as much as he’d hoped it would relent to something manageable, it did not.’
The author’s note at the end of this book is beautiful and completely worth reading for some extra context. Blake discusses her own experience with coming off medication for a mood disorder and reading this makes you appreciate the heart that went into Regan’s character and her journey.
However, this didn’t completely overshadow the darkness that came from these characters; there was an intense amount of co-dependency from both, and Regan’s hyper-sexual nature takes up pages and pages of narrative. At points, I felt myself hoping that they would separate and seek help because they were stuck in a cycle of toxicity that consumed them both. Being subject to Regan’s fantasies about getting hit by a car so Aldo would have to come home early from a trip was difficult to read because it didn’t feel out of the realm of possibility for her to follow through. I believed her capacity for destruction was tangible.
Overall, I was overwhelmed with mixed feelings when I finished this book. I liked it but I didn’t. I could feel Aldo and Regan’s love at the end, which I appreciated, but it was a hard time getting there. There is also the potential for the writing to feel pretentious, as though it’s trying too hard to be otherworldly. I would recommend this book but be prepared that it might not be what you expect. Be prepared for a bit of discomfort.
A friend who read this at the same time as I made a great point – she said that you really must read and take in every single word otherwise you risk confusion. There is no assuming in Blake’s words. Each word is impactful and if you miss something, you may miss a large part of what makes this book worthwhile.
HEATHER FOX
In between exploring everything Melbourne has to offer and cooking new recipes at home, Heather loves to write about all the media and culture she consumes. She reads a lot, but for some reason she can never seem to shorten her TBR list. Heather is currently working on a variety of fiction and hoping that a debut novel is amongst them. She has had work published with Aniko Press. You can follow Heather on Instagram @itsheatherfox