Alone With You in the Ether

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Alone With You in the Ether plays with narrative structure and linear time to weave a story of two broken people crashing together like comets, and we, as audience, are witness to their glorious destruction." — Tor.com Talk about the different relationships Julia and Burton have with their daughter Martha in “Pond.” Why does Julia insist upon giving Martha as much autonomy as possible? Why does Burton have such trouble reconciling his love for his daughter with his love for his grandson? The Seattle small town setting was brought to life through the wonderful descriptions from the cozy fall weather to the locales that Eloise & Austin visit across the chapters - I loved the small town vibes of this + the romcom energy making it a book I could NOT PUT DOWN. In “Leap,” why does Patsy jump? How is this symbolic? Why do Sheila and Colin remain married? Do you think their relationship has become a charade, or that it will ever work again?

The mechanics of his ritual were simple: Raise the joint to his lips, breathe in, breathe out, let his hand fall. This was the formula. Formulas he understood. He brought the joint to his lips, inhaled, and exhaled into nothing. The more films I made, the more I began to recognize that the kinds of stories I wanted to tell and the ways in which I wanted to tell those stories would not be supported easily in the medium of film. In general, film works with broader strokes and I’m interested in all the little in between moments, the tiny gestures and notions that are the smallest atoms of human interaction. Writing gives me the opportunity to find the large meaning in the small instances. And it also gives me the opportunity to spend a lot of time by myself. Which I quite like! SCENE: The air that afternoon has the crisp, weatherless quality that only happens in Chicago for about a week in mid-September. The sun is bright overhead, and the leaves on the tree above him are mostly undisturbed. The stories in Alone With You are portraits of everyday sorrows, but Silver keeps hope alive, even when it's on life support. Her characters often feel powerless, then discover what they can do - Silver makes clear with devastating simplicity, that tendency to change course works to our advantage - and passes it along to her characters with grace and insight as they grapple with change, revelation and the complexities of modern life. These are clear-eyed, unsentimental stories that resound with resilience.

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.” Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster. For the scholarships? Yes, I do.” Since it’s the first week of school, Ms. Holiday looks frazzled as hell. Her ponytail is sliding down the side of her head, and no fewer than five mini cans of Dr Pepper clutter her desk. And this is the woman in charge of my academic future. “Your grades and test scores are fantastic. You have a great shot. But everyone applying to USC—both for freshman year and for scholarships—has equally good numbers. The rep I spoke with over the summer emphasized community involvement, especially for scholarship applicants.” The receptionist at the adoption agency went on maternity leave. Rather than hire another temp, the director decided that Vivian could manage her work while sitting at the front desk. She instructed Vivian on how to handle the prospective parents who came to the office to be interviewed. Vivian was to be polite and helpful in terms of offering water or coffee or directing them to the restrooms in the hallway, but not overly solicitous and definitely not optimistic in any way. Vivian was confused by this last directive; she was unsure how to be helpful without giving off an air of optimism. Most couples sat in the waiting room in silence, fearing, perhaps, that anything they said in front of the receptionist might be used against them. She took the empty yogurt cup and spoon to the kitchen area. He walked out of the bathroom, adjusting his jeans.

There was a right answer to this question and many, many wrong ones. This question, much like quantum groups, did not get any easier the more times Aldo was asked. The more times he ran the scenarios, in fact, the more the variables changed. How was he feeling? He had been bad before. He would be bad again. It would cycle and fluctuate the same way the weather would. It would rain in two weeks, he thought.I also really liked Marianne! I didn’t expect to care this much about this old woman, but her dynamic with Eloise was also super enjoyable! I loved that they were so similar, but their dynamic ended up being kind of similar to Eloise and Austin’s: they pushed each other’s buttons, but always in a joking, friendly way. I also really liked seeing Marianne, Austin and Eloise hanging out all together. All Alone with You" is about high school senior Eloise who is struggling with her mental health and autopiloting through her last year of school. Pushed out of her comfort zone, she meets fellow high schooler Austin and senior citizen Marianne, who play a big part into Eloise learning its okay to not be okay. Aldo’s mother, a lively Dominican girl too young for motherhood and too beautiful to stay long in one place, had never been very present. If she had ever asked anything from the universe, Aldo imagined she’d probably gotten what she wished. When you learn a new word, you suddenly see it everywhere. The mind comforts itself by believing this to be coincidence but isn’t—it’s ignorance falling away. Your future self will always see what your present self is blind to. This is the problem with mortality, which is in fact a problem of time.”

Silver masterfully uses descriptive details and imagery. Share a passage that impressed itself upon your mind, and discuss her use of language and metaphor.I would’ve liked to see more of her family. I know it was explained that she didn’t have much in common with her family and didn’t love hanging out with them, but still. There's a true romcom energy to this book that I believe readers of Lynn Painter or any YA romance really would have a great time with (if you love YA romances, you need this book in your life). NOW I WANT A MOVIE ADAPTATION - this would be so cute as movie or tv show! ♡❀ My parents have stressed, ad nauseam, that they don’t want me taking out loans for college. Especially with a solid school like University of Washington fifteen minutes from our house, in-state tuition included. And I get it—my parents still have outstanding student loans—but USC is my dream. I’ll gladly go into debt until my forties for my dream, but a scholarship would probably be less devastating to my future credit score. Marisa Silver’s novel The God of War, earned great acclaim and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Read it as well, and discuss the differences in her style and language. Is her writing different in the novel than it was in short stories?

From Olivie Blake, the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, comes a literary, intimate 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. 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. My only downside was the cursing. It just felt too much, personally, for a young adult novel. I would have liked to see the characters not limit their language in that way. I LOVED seeing their friendship develop and, as I mentioned above, seeing Eloise opening up and becoming happier was so amazing! And Austin just cared sooooo much about her!!!! He was always so sweet and caring and lovely and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!! Once again: WHEN’S IT MY TURN?! 😩cried, sobbed, threw up, cut off all my hair, threw myself down the stairs, crash my car into a grocery store, drank bleach straight from the bottle, lit a cigarette next to my dads oxygen tank, and entered a lions den. this is the best written book i’ve come across.