"Alone With You In The Ether" Is Not a Good Book

This review was first posted on my Goodreads (add me), after I read Alone With You In The Ether for my book club. As you'll come to read, my feelings on this book are: confused, angry, disappointed, and self-reflective.

While analyzing my own reaction to the book, I came to the conclusion that in my experience of Alone With You In The Ether is made up of layers—each important in their own right. These are not necessarily presented to the reader in this order, nor as mutually exclusive themes.

First layer: The complexity of relationships with other people.

The novel touches on the difficulty of making the distinction between relationships that are 'healthy' for you and those that are 'unhealthy,' and makes a good point that 'health' can be considered a relative concept; what works for one individual may be destructive to another. You could also argue that the novel is nods to the moment when these subjective definitions of health lead to two 'healthy' individuals creating a wholly 'unhealthy' relationship and vice versa.

“We don’t talk about it often, but we know, don’t we? That you’re, I don’t know. More fragile,” [Aldo's father] said, wincing slightly, and Aldo felt suddenly stiff, like his bones would splinter if he moved. “You need stability. You need someone reliable, predictable. Regan, she’s impulsive.”

Who's to say what Aldo needs? Traditional categories of what constitutes 'stable' and 'impulsive' are torn apart in this novel; though Regan is impulsive, complicated, and selfish, she is predictably so, a seemingly slight, but extremely important distinction from those that are unreliably stable, such as her on-again, off-again (ex-)boyfriend Marc.

Many things, such as impulsivity, mental illness, and instability, are very likely to be connoted negatively, especially in the context of what one should be searching for in a relationship, but Alone With You In The Ether pushes back against normative definitions of what a 'healthy' and 'normal' relationship is by showcasing a relationship that is not 'perfect' in the literal sense of the word, but works (im)perfectly (ha-ha) for the people in it.

Second layer: The complexity of one's relationship with oneself.

The largest struggle I had with this book was the way that Regan and Aldo think about themselves; a lot of their inner monologue (sometimes even external) was very much reminiscent of prepubescent teens writing romance novels on Wattpad. The dialogue, chock-full of intense waves — highs of self-satisfied preening for being 'different' to lows of lamenting their 'normalcy' — made me feel as if I were being transported back to the way I perceived myself when I was younger.

“She was gratified he didn’t say you’ll like it. That was one of her least favourite phrases; it was always unwisely assured. She hated all scenarios preceding the assumption that someone could predict her taste. Either they thought it universal enough that she could be lumped in with masses or they thought (usually incorrectly) that they understood her specific needs, and she wasn’t sure which crime was worse.”

“There was nothing worse than being predictable. Nothing smaller than feeling ordinary. Nothing more disappointing than being reminded she was both.”

My initial thoughts after reading these quotes: What is so wrong with being normal? Or being predictable? Superiority complex much?

My thoughts after mulling it over: Blake expertly captures our chronic desire to be unique compared to everyone else. Regan's struggle with the need to be known and categorized by others as something different from themselves is something that is embarrassingly relatable, which is perhaps why I disliked it so much after first reading it.

*I had quotes from Aldo for this section but lost them, but just know that he is not spared from this either

This leads into my third layer: The irrationality of the human experience.

I found that after finishing the book, putting it down, and allowing my negative opinions of the book to tire themselves out, I came to my own theory of why so many people love this book.

The characters were well-built. I found their tendencies to clutch to their less desirable traits irritating at many points throughout the book, something that I realized afterwards was a hallmark of a novel that is trying to portray the rhythms that people fall into, whether or not they are detrimental. I was reminded of a quote from Einstein — "Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results" — maybe then we're all a little crazy.

I suspect it was the difficulty of being faced with this irrational, frustrating, but ultimately integral part of being a human with complex emotions, thoughts, and desires — which, whether we like it or not, all orbit around the beating heart, the core, of our own ego — that initially made me feel judgemental and almost hostile towards the characters of Regan and Aldo.

It was my own hubris that prevented me from relating to the characters and fully enjoying their story because I wanted to be different from them — plot twist! I'm not. This novel describes the disarming, confusing, and overwhelming experience of finally loving someone else as much as we love ourselves, and though it took me a while, I appreciate it for that.

Here's my (real) problem with it:

Though I did just kind of sing its praises, I still awarded Alone With You In The Ether with 4 stars both because of my initial negative reaction and for the way that the novel treats Regan.

Too many times she is characterized as that elusive manic pixie dream girl that every man wants to pin down, but can't because she's just too much of an ~enigma~, both in her relationships with Marc and Aldo. Aldo continuously refers to her as an equation he can't solve, her mind is a problem he just can't figure out and he loves it blah blah blah.

Why is it so difficult for authors to accept the fact that women are not some mythical creature whose mind works entirely different than that of a man? Of course there are some things that aren't able to cross the boundaries of the ways that people of different genders experience the world, but just because you can't relate to it doesn't mean you should immediately write it off as something that is beyond your understanding, and then cover up your laziness by attributing the other person as an 'enigma' that is intriguing but ultimately unsolvable.

It also doesn't totally sit well with me that Regan is plagued with a need to be loved, accepted, and desired because of her mommy issues (which then transforms her into a succubus with an unquenchable thirst for sex), and is very impulsive and irrational, while Aldo is calculating, rational to a fault, and more 'controlled' in terms of his sexual desires. Man smart, woman dumb? Of course, it's not like these characters aren't allowed to exist — these archetypes are popular for a reason, and must be accurate to someone somewhere, but can we have something different?

Overall, I don't regret reading the book — any novel that prompts such a strong reaction (on either side of the spectrum) is worth a read in my books (:P). It's much more important to me that the books I read elicit strong emotions than none at all.