Alone With You in the Ether

Product Information

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. I always have a hard time reviewing books that I really, really love, so I’ll do my best here. The best parts of All Alone With You are Eloise’s relationship with Austen and her relationship with Marianne. Interactions that seem so small and minute between them felt so intimate and so tender that my heart ached in the best way. It was like I watched it unfold so slowly in front of me. A single paragraph left me so giddy and not a word was spoken between them. It was the way they gravitated to each other that felt so intoxicating and... am I just being dramatic?!?! Idk you'll have to find out and read it (I totally dont think so though 🤗)

I boot up the tower, turn on my display, and then sink into the cushion of my gaming chair. Log in to Monsoon—the gaming client for Realm of the Ravager—and wait as it updates. RotR is my go-to whenever life becomes too much—and let’s face it, senior year is off to a shitty start. Plus it’s Friday, and I’ve earned endless hours of gaming. The street that runs in front of Evanston has bumper-to-bumper traffic since the elementary school is down the road, and I hit the crosswalk button with my elbow. Seattle drivers are notoriously passive-aggressive. Meaning they’ll go out of their way to break traffic laws in the name of being nice, which inevitably causes traffic jams, which then causes people to lay on their horns or run red lights. It’s chaos. If you’re looking for a book you will want to talk about for a long time (and have plenty of people to talk to about it), The Atlas Six is it.” — Buzzfeed Many of my stories explore the issues of separation and intimacy, and I think that these issues are brought to the fore when the possibility of loss is most immanent. These stories are never only, or even mostly, about illness or loss. These threads are always part of a greater weave that is full of humor and moments of happiness and moments of connection. It’s all happening the same time, just like life.

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! This reading group guide for Alone With You includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Marisa Silver. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

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? Aldo was thinking about quantum groups. Specifically, hexagons. It was Aldo’s firm belief that the hexagon was the most significant form in nature, not purely because of his fondness for the Apis—commonly known as the honeybee—but not entirely unrelated. Many people were typically unaware of how many kinds of bees there were. The bumblebee was slow and stupid enough to be petted, which was sort of sweet, though not quite as interesting. Following her acclaimed, Los Angeles Times Book Prize–nominated novel, The God of War, Marisa Silver’s extraordinary book, Alone With You, is a starkly elegant and superbly rendered collection of short stories.

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. But, the absolute best character I think in this novel is Marianne. I think she delivers so much more depth to this piece. She’s funny and whip-smart and provides depth and insight not only to the protagonist, Eloise, but also to the reader. She also adds this fun 70s - Fleetwood Mac vibe to the whole book which is a whole other level of fun. Amelia Coombs has such a fun writing style. The story is absolutely endearing, with great pacing, wonderful characters and quirky wit. 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

overall surprisingly really enjoyed this! Eloise and Austin had believable chemistry and cute moments! it even made me cry in the third act! Entering into her senior year, Eloise has one goal in sight which is to get into USC. The only problem is that according to her guidance counselor, Eloise needs to put in some community service to make her application stand out. Her counselor suggests Lifecare as a great place to earn the time and seeing no other option, Eloise agrees. However, she isn't the best at talking to people and prefers to keep to herself so the outcome doesn't look promising. this is the second book i've read by coombs (the other being "you, me, and the honeybees"). in both books, coombs does this thing where the guy and the girl meet and, it's not instalove, but they immediately are like, i need to spend all of my time with you. and i'm obsessed with that. i think a lot of books are relying on tropes like "enemies to lovers" and "friends to lovers" and, arguably i guess this book could be either, depending on what you want to sell, but i think it's neither. and that's super refreshing. 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. I frown. Because I might be the least involved student at Evanston High. Or in the Seattle area altogether. I’ve never volunteered a day in my life, I don’t talk to anyone—my fellow peers, bus drivers, baristas, our mail person—if I can help it, and I don’t give a shit about the neighborhood. “So. Like seventy-five hours or…?”It’s the same with a character in a story. I start with a tiny shred of information about a character, then I write scenes, give her words, decide if those words feel right. Once I’ve found her language, the way she speaks, then I’m beginning to know her better. I throw action in her way so she has to respond, to behave, and then I learn even more. And all the while, I’m shaping and reshaping the character so that she becomes palpable. I always remember that there is no objective “truth” about any character. A person might have a mythology about him or herself that serves a certain emotional need. And characters are often revealed through other’s perspectives, and those perspectives are filtered through the emotions and desires of that other person. It’s complicated! I particularly enjoyed Eloise’s character arc throughout this book. She has anxiety, and she’s virtually been friendless since her two best friends abandoned her during a period of severe depression. Hanging out with Austin is the last thing she wants to do, especially since he has such a sunny personality compared to her grumpy one, but she grows to learn that isolating yourself for so long has more adverse effects and spending time with other people can, actually, lift your spirits. Yes, something like that.” There was never an easy way to explain what he was working on. It was nice of his father to ask, but they both knew that anything Aldo had to say was mostly lost on him. “Everything okay, Dad?” His face was anguished for a moment, as if he thought that this other couple were, at that very moment, being granted the child he’d hoped would be his. Of course this was not the way it worked, but perhaps the man didn’t know that.

Think the vibes of Better Than The Movies meets the grumpy x sunshine dynamic and you have All Alone With You ― a spectacular YA romance about friendship, music, navigating anxiety & most of all, love! Eloise Deane and Austin Yang easily captured the banter and sweetness of the grumpy x sunshine pairing and with what's ultimately a very character-driven story, this was a wonderful YA that you should absolutely have on your radar! ༘♡ ⋆˚.ೃ࿐ Marisa Silver's Alone With You is a triumph for the short story. Funny and surprising and unsentimental, the collection finds in dark situations a persuasive hope. Every story is striking both in its emotional complexity, and in the wry clarity with which it's told. There was only one thing I disliked, which is minuscule and became a less of an issue the further I got into the book. In the beginning, the wording was a bit repetitive when describing Austin as “golden retriever energy”. It happened often in the beginning and slowly died off. I noticed “chain smoked” was used often as well, but wasn’t as bad. That aside, this book was a delight. I went in looking for something light that would give me the warm and fuzzies and while I cried MULTIPLE times reading that (accurate portrayals of social anxiety just hit different okay) it did in fact deliver on the warms and the fuzzies. The characters were the kind that you instantly wanted to get to know and were definitely the strength of the book. But honestly I almost rounded it up to a 5 star because that cover is everything. A) I want to look half as cool as Eloise looks on that cover (and never will), and B) I love when people do that thing where they hold up an album or a book and like, complete it with their bodies (???) and it kind of looks like that. The stupid, obvious things,” Vivian said. “People who have a lot of love to give.” She was immediately ashamed of her small cruelty, but he did not seem to remember his own words.When I reach my house, I’m relieved to find the driveway empty. Since our house was built in the early 1900s, our garage is better suited for tiny cars and horse-drawn carriages—not my mom’s massive minivan. And my dad bikes everywhere. Everywhere. He wears those gross spandex shorts and everything. After he lost his job, Dad made biking his life. Mom jokes that it’s a midlife crisis, but there’s a nugget of truth at the core. I adored the plot and the growth I saw throughout the book from Eloise. I really felt so much of what she was going through and the doubt that anxiety creates. I loved Marianne and learning her story and just how this entire cast functioned together. Eloise realizes she’s made a huge mistake—especially when she’s paired with Austin, the fellow volunteer who’s the sunshine to her cloudy day. But as Eloise and Austin work together to keep Marianne Landis—the mysterious former frontwoman of the 1970s band the Laundromats—company, something strange happens. She actually…likes Marianne and Austin? Eloise isn’t sure what to do with that, especially when her feelings toward Austin begin to blur into more-than-friends territory.