Alone with You in the Ether: A Love Story

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Parts 4-5

Part 6

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Art

A central motif in the novel, art helps illustrate the novel’s themes and propel the plot and characters toward change and discovery. Regan works as a docent at the art museum in Chicago, giving tours to visitors and describing the artwork. She has always had a passion for art but never considered herself an artist, only a replicator. When Aldo asks to see her art, Regan considers it a threat to her image: “Art. She’d never been good at it, not really. Not in the way he would expect from her […] Her art wouldn’t satisfy him because it wasn’t art at all, it wasn’t anything. Art was emotional truth and she had none of that” (168). After Regan meets Aldo in the armory of the art museum, her life course changes paths, and nothing is ever the same. Nocturne: Blue and Gold by James McNeill Whistler, is Regan’s favorite work in the museum because it asks nothing and expects nothing. Instead, it just captures a moment.

Aldo helps inspire Regan to finally start creating. She first proves to herself that she can decipher art by replicating others’ work and then decides to draw a nude portrait of Aldo. Her desire to become an artist is fragile at first, but she knows that art is more worthwhile if it involves some risk: “Art, a voice buzzed in her ear, was […] dissecting a piece of herself and leaving it out for […] the possibility of misinterpretation and the inevitability of judgment” (184). Regan’s piece, Alone with You in the Ether, expresses the theme of The Passage and Consequences of Time through the hexagonal pattern that decorates the landscape and speaks to the feeling of being small amid a vast universe. Art allows Regan to find herself, to express herself, and to find a purpose and source of stability that doesn’t rely on anyone else, thus helping develop the theme of Navigating and Accepting Mental Illness. Looking back, Regan feels that Aldo inspired her and finally allowed this part of her to break free; thus, art also relates to the theme of Love as a Composite of Contradictions and Opposites.

Hexagons and Bees

Both hexagons and bees symbolize The Passage and Consequences of Time and the way that the human condition is directly tied to time. In Part 1 of the story Aldo talks and thinks endlessly about bees, their habits, and their ability to create a hexagonal pattern. Metaphors like the “hive of the city” (29) describe the relationship between this pattern and the world that Aldo and Regan occupy. When Aldo tells Regan what he knows about honeybees and their tendencies toward matriarchy, she finds that he’s ”closest to handsome” (85) while he’s discussing this topic because it’s something he’s passionate about. In addition, Regan likes hearing about a creature that favors the female.

Aldo theorizes about replicating the hexagonal shape of time, and he proposes a total of six conversations, hoping that during them he can complete some sort of loop and solve the enigma within Regan. He considers hexagons “the most significant form in nature” (10) and thinks that time itself possibly travels along a hexagonal path. Explaining this to Regan inspires her to create her first real piece of art, Alone with You in the Ether, and to express what she and Aldo consider “the human condition! It’s the entire universe itself!” (307). Throughout the novel, Regan and Aldo entertain the idea of traveling back through time along these paths and altering their mistakes. When they get back together in the story’s conclusion, Regan proposes that she’s willing to loop around the hexagon, forever turning corners, until she turns the corner that leads her to Aldo.

Sex and Drugs

Regan and Aldo both have vices amid learning to live with mental illness, alluding to the theme of Navigating and Accepting Mental Illness. Aldo smokes cannabis to numb himself and to distance himself from considering his own mortality and how trapped he’s within it. Regan wrestles with a compulsion to use sex as a means for approval and assurance that she’s loved. In addition, she has a conflicted relationship with her medication and eventually quits taking it. Regan’s sexual behavior is risky and vulgar at times: She uses places like church and Masso’s restaurants as settings for sexual gratification. Aldo keeps up with it at first, but Regan doesn’t realize until she has hindsight that she was ignoring Aldo’s needs in favor of her own. She feels vast and infinite while making love to Aldo and craves that feeling constantly, while Aldo is often happy to just sit in silence or have a conversation. Aldo sees sex as more of a taboo act while Regan is open about it. Aldo doesn’t quit using cannabis during the novel, but it becomes less of a defining trait the longer he’s with Regan. Likewise, Regan finds a source of stability and an outlet for her emotions in art, and she learns to manage her condition without medication.