Regan is bi-polar; she takes her pills and attends counselling sessions with a court appointed psychotherapist as part of her sentence for having been found guilty of counterfeiting. She is from a wealthy family and volunteers as a tour guide at the Art Institute of Chicago. Regan does not feel loved by her mother and believes her parents favour her older sister.
Aldo is a doctoral student whose main preoccupation is with solving the problems of time travel. His mother left him in the care of his father, Masso, when he was a baby.
Regan and Aldo meet in the armory of the Art Institute. Regan suggests that they should meet for six conversations and see what they can learn about each other.
This is a gently erotic love story but much more than that. Olivie Blake says of herself that she is “a person with a mood disorder” and, obviously it would seem, she has written authentically about Regan’s struggles with medication and therapy. Aldo is very different to Regan and although he has a sweet, loving relationship with his father he is unable to communicate generally with others. He teaches quantum physics while working on his doctorate and he dislikes his students as much as they dislike him. It is hard as a reader, however, to dislike him as he is portrayed so sympathetically.
The book is set out in an unusually lovely way. The story is told in parts and occasionally different narrators will give overviews of the meanings of what has happened at a particular point.
I LOVED this book and I have given it 5 stars.
Published by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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