by Olivie Blake
"At the aural epicenter, Robb Moreira and Sura Siu alternate between
protagonists Aldo and Regan's perspectives. The listener is immersed into their sharply distinct, mundane, yet complex worlds..."- Booklist
Narrated primarily by Robb Moreira and Sura Siu, this program features a cast of cameos, including one from the author.
From Olivie Blake, the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, comes an intimate and contemporary study of time, space, and the nature of love. Alone with You in the Ether explores what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken.
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?
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books.
"At the aural epicenter, Robb Moreira and Sura Siu alternate between
protagonists Aldo and Regan's perspectives. The listener is immersed into their sharply distinct, mundane, yet complex worlds..."- Booklist
Narrated primarily by Robb Moreira and Sura Siu, this program features a cast of cameos, including one from the author.
From Olivie Blake, the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, comes an intimate and contemporary study of time, space, and the nature of love. Alone with You in the Ether explores what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken.
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?
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books.
Reviews-
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September 26, 2022
An artist with bipolar disorder and an obsessive mathematician embark on an unconventional romance in this cerebral love story from Blake (The Atlas Six). When Art Institute of Chicago docent Charlotte Regan, who’s in court-ordered psychotherapy following a scheme to counterfeit foreign currency, meets Aldo Damiani, a prickly University of Chicago grad student, their connection is immediate. Aldo urges Regan to agree to six conversations, over the course of which he intends to understand her. With the bemused tolerance of Regan’s boyfriend, the pair grow closer—so close that Regan offers Aldo “one part of me for your consumption.” She expects him to go for sex, but instead he asks for her art, which she hasn’t worked on in years. Spurred on, Regan takes up painting, dumps her boyfriend, quits her medication, and launches a volatile, passionate relationship with Aldo. Blake’s prose is silky and as eccentric as her characters, with an assortment of third-party narrators interrupting the action in “voice-over.” (“THE NARRATOR, A STUDENT WHO HAS JUST ARRIVED: You can never prepare for weathering anything in Chicago.”) The message of finding a richer life off mood stabilizers won’t sit well with all readers, but there’s no denying the characters make for fascinating and complicated studies. This is a book to savor. -
Robb Moreira and Sura Siu portray protagonists Aldo and Regan in this contemporary love story. Regan, a bipolar counterfeit artist, and Aldo, a depressed math professor, meet at the Art Institute and strike up an unusual conversation. They continue to meet, discussing their interests and drawing closer. Siu illuminates Regan's bipolar states by mixing tempos and changing pitch. Moreira brings Aldo's matter-of-factness and attention to detail to light through even tones and articulation. The cameos at the beginning of the story are a bit distracting as the audiobook takes on a play format. However, the later cameos work more naturally within the dialogue. Do not miss author Olivie Blake's note at the end of the book. S.K.G. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
