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.

I’m very close to my mother and I was so happy to dedicate this to her and my two sisters. My mother has been an incredible source of support and courage for me. She has had a wonderful working life as a film director. She took me very seriously when I was a little girl, allowing me into her own creative process and making me feel that my ideas were of value. She always asked me to read her screenplays and to watch cuts of her films and she really cared about my comments. I even got to sit in on casting sessions and weight in on what I thought of the actors! And she took me to the old movies. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting in art houses watching Italian films then discussing them with her. She cared about story telling and cared about what I thought about narrative. What a great gift to give a child, to let her know her ideas matter. Eloise Deane is the worst and doesn’t care who knows it. She’s grumpy, prefers to be alone, and is just slogging through senior year with one goal: get accepted to USC and move to California. So when her guidance counselor drops the bombshell that to score a scholarship she’ll desperately need, her applications require volunteer hours, Eloise is up for the challenge. Until she’s paired with LifeCare, a volunteer agency that offers social support to lonely seniors through phone calls and visits. Basically, it’s a total nightmare for Eloise’s anxiety. Marisa Silver dazzled and inspired readers with her critically acclaimed The God of War (a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist), praised by Richard Russo as “a novel of great metaphorical depth and beauty.” In this elegant, finely wrought new collection, Alone With You, Silver has created eight indelible stories that mine the complexities of modern relationships and the unexpected ways love manifests itself. Her brilliantly etched characters confront life’s abrupt and unsettling changes with fear, courage, humor, and overwhelming grace. 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.I received an ARC from the publisher through Netgalley. These are my honest opinions, and in no way was I compensated for this review.** 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. 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?” Like most guidance counselors, Ms. Holiday is preppy and cheerful, and most of her office is either pink or covered in glitter. Sometimes both. There’s even one of those kitten-hanging-from-a-branch posters on the wall to my left, which I thought only existed in corny nineties movies. But she doesn’t bother hiding her sigh of annoyance as studies me from the other side of her desk.

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. You don’t have to worry about that,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. “It’ll all come out in the end.”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 lift my eyes from the handout, my stomach already twisting and turning into little anxiety knots. “How many hours?” I cross the hallway and push open one of the heavy double doors leading outside. We’re less than a month away from fall, and the maple trees lining the cobblestone pathway to the street hint at their turn, green leaves dulling in brightness, rusting around the edges. Even though I’m dying to move south, I’ll miss the weather. Especially fall. The turning of the leaves and maple lattes and how the city comes alive once summer comes to an end. His clarity rendered her speechless. How could she have known that the bed thing she would never recover from would be love?" There were a couple of instances of “telling instead of showing”. They were very well implemented, don’t get me wrong! The only reason I’m complaining is bc I kind of wanted to see some of those things played out lol (like them planning their Halloween movie night, Austin meeting Eloise’s family, etc – these things were mentioned, but we didn’t actually *see* them happen). I just liked these characters so much that I wanted more 😅.

These are very lovely short stories, haunting and tinged with melancholy, though never despairing or maudlin in any way. We watch as the various characters come to see themselves more fully, as unexpected events bring life into sharper, sometimes startling focus. Each story is separate and yet similar in theme, as the beautifully and well-named title reveals. This collection is about the ways in which couples and families connect and the circumstances and character flaws that keep them from connecting more deeply.The worry on Ms. Holiday’s face eases. “Excellent,” she says with a tentative smile. “Well, don’t let me keep you! I’m here if you have any—” 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…?” I hit play on one of my newest playlists, full of loud, angry perfection, as I head home. We live between Greenwood and Ballard, in an old neighborhood with equally old houses. Although half have been remodeled into weirdly vertical, modern town houses. Nothing is uglier than a house built in 1920 beside an all-angles town house with solar panels, but here we are.

Not really. That’s how we progress as a culture. We change our minds and, little by little, we become something else.”

Each story is like a rich truffle; with an incredible variety of points of view (the latch-kid child, the mother of a mentally challenged child, the father of a teen, the daughter whose mother is dying, the woman with a mental illness, the woman whose husband leaves her for another, the patient attendant at a VA hospital) it is certain that at least one character will strike particularly close to home for every reader. Aldo’s right thumb beat against his thigh, percussive to the rhythm of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” 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.