Alone With You in the Ether

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There’s no magic number. Most schools ask for anywhere from fifty to two hundred hours, but USC is looking at more than just metrics. They’re looking for investment and involvement. A true passion for helping your community.” 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. But that’s what everybody says, of course,” the man said. Vivian could hear the tension in his voice. He must have stood up at that point because as he continued his voice grew distant and full of air. “You must hear stupid, obvious things like that every day,” he said. “‘We have a lot of love to give.’ It’s probably meaningless to you. But what else can we say? We want a child. We have enough money to offer a child a good life, all the advantages. We’re decent people with decent values. But it feels like we’re paying the price for some biological glitch we have no control over.” In the title story, “Alone With You,” Marie feels the need to leave those she loves in the face of her illness. Why is she so against letting her family care for her? Do you agree with her thought that “It was only that they had discovered that they needed to look away from one another to find their futures,” (p. 164)? In each story, discuss the character’s detachment from each other, and from themselves. Is this a defense mechanism, or a character trait? Which protagonist has the greatest sense of self, and why?

It’s just, if someone walked up to me on the street and started talking about communism or socialism, I wouldn’t stop to have a conversation.” Eight indelible stories that mine the complexities of modern relationships and the unexpected ways love manifests itself.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. In the O. Henry Prize-winning story “The Visitor,” a VA hospital nurse’s aide contends with a family ghost and discovers the ways in which her own past haunts her. The reticent father in “Pond” is confronted with a Solomonic choice that pits his love for his daughter against his feelings for her young son. In “Night Train to Frankfurt,” first published in The New Yorker, a daughter travels to an alternative-medicine clinic in Germany in a gambit to save her mother’s life. And in the title story, a woman vacations in Morocco with her family while contemplating a decision that will both ruin and liberate them all. From “Temporary,” where a young woman confronts the ephemeral nature of companionship, to “Three Girls,” in which sisters trapped in a snowstorm recognize the boundaries of childhood, the nuanced voices of Alone With You bear the hallmarks of an instant classic from a writer with unerring talent and imaginative resource. Silver has the extraordinary ability to render her fictional inhabitants instantly relatable, in all their imperfections. Her stories have the singular quality of looking in a mirror. We see at once what is familiar and what is strange. In these stirring narratives, we meet ourselves anew. Alone With You by Marisa Silver – eBook Details Where’s your wife?” she said, imagining that the man had forbidden his wife to come this time, that he had decided that her presence was what stood in the way of their getting a child.Longing swells each of the eight stories in Alone With You, as Silver investigates 'aloneness' and the dear and inevitable distance between people in loving relationships. These stories stand out because of their high tolerance for complexity, never opting for a single note. The situations here don't settle on the neat broad themes of loss or connection, but there are always surprises, nuances, changes of heart. Aldo’s right thumb beat against his thigh, percussive to the rhythm of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King,”

Not really. That’s how we progress as a culture. We change our minds and, little by little, we become something else.” Aldo, who was called less frequently by his surname, Damiani, and even less commonly by his birth name, Rinaldo, had rolled a joint five minutes prior to his episode of silent meditation. He was twirling it between his fingers, staring into nothing. 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! Is her detachment and practicality an asset for Candy as a nurse? What are the advantages and disadvantages of her attitude towards gruesome wounds and her patients in general? Mother-daughter relationships are featured prominently throughout Alone With You. In many instances, the daughter ends up behaving more like a mother figure. Compare these relationships in two or more stories. What do they share, and how are they different?

I lift my eyes from the handout, my stomach already twisting and turning into little anxiety knots. “How many hours?” Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster. Ron Rash is renowned for his writing about Appalachia, but his latest book, The Caretaker, begins ... Do you have your stories figured out before you put pen to paper or do you let them work themselves out as you go along? There are no perfect circles, Regan. Yes, there’s one, and it’s this one: They fall in love because they’re always in love. That’s circular, not a circle. He can believe whatever he wants; she knows it’s a perfect circle.”

You look like a fish, sweetheart,” he said, and he put his lips to her cheek and blew out puffs of air until she giggled. For a second, Vivian caught a glimpse of what her mother had looked like as a little girl. The literal definition of high school is jumping through arbitrary hoops. Grades and tests and placement exams. Numbers that will mean absolutely nothing in a year. But the University of Southern California has been my dream since freshman year, when I built my first computer. Since I fell in love with computers and coding and video games like my favorite MMORPG, Realm of the Ravager. USC has one of the—if not the—best computer science programs in the world for video games. They even offer a BS in Computer Science Games. Why would I go anywhere else? Marisa Silver tells eight quietly haunting tales about love, memory and making ends meet.”— The Wall Street Journal How does reading parts of the story through the perspective of Julia, Martha, and Burton impact your reading of this story? Why do you think this story is titled “Pond”? The director of the agency assured them that they had done well in the interview process, but that it was her job to match the right children with the right parents and this effort could take time.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. She took the empty yogurt cup and spoon to the kitchen area. He walked out of the bathroom, adjusting his jeans.