Inside (edition 2012)

What happens inside, behind closed doors, in private moments, and in minds and hearts: that's the stuff of Alix Ohlin's novel.

"'He wouldn’t let me in,' she said, 'and I refused to stay out.'"

Mitch's mother says that of his father. She is not a character with whom readers spend a lot of time, but her statement resonates throughout Inside.

The characters with whom readers do spend time?

First, Grace, who is a therapist in Montreal, when readers meet her in 1996.

Next, Anne, to whom readers are introduced as one of Grace's patients when Annie is a teenager.

And Mitch, whose first appearance is in Grace's segment (she met him when he was a graduate student and she was beginning to study psychology), but readers meet him directly in Iqaluit, in 2006.

To varying degrees, each of these characters nestles in at least one of the other character's narratives. Where there is not a tangible overlap, there is a thematic overlap.

Grace, Anne, and Mitch are all struggling with what is inside, with what they keep inside, with what is inside the people they love. Also under consideration? Outside. How it's connected with inside, or the ways in which it's disengaged, questions about how the break(s) occurred.

It's a delicate balance. In life, and in the narrative.

"That’s how it went: one day lovely, the next flawed. In this respect, was it so much different from anybody else’s life?"

On a daily basis, perhaps not so much. One person's life is a lot like another's. There are ups and downs in working lives, romantic encounters, family life, and friendships: the details are interchangeable.

As Inside begins, the differences are apparent. Even the two therapists have starkly different workdays, from the outside.

(In under 300 pages, this novel manages to fully flesh out all three characters, complete with details about day-to-day life at home, work and their significant relationships: deftly drawn and wholly believable.)

Paradoxically, as the novel progresses, the insides begin to blur.

Some of the external differences remain distinct, though people's lives echo and intersect in the narrative too, but the emotional strain and struggle is almost interchangeable.

Readers looking for plot will be frustrated by the shifting perspectives and the sense of disconnection that arises if you are only observing the outsides of the characters' lives, which do overlap but not often enough to satisfy a plot-hungry reader.

The work's cohesion builds from the shared experiences in characters' insides. The bulk of the narrative's action is internal, viewed through each of these three character's experiences, and it is the gradual layering of emotional intensity, across their narratives, that roots Inside.

Each of the following passages is pulled from one character's perspective, but altering the pronouns allows them to fit with or reflect the other characters' experiences too:

"The gap between what he said and what she didn’t know swelled between them like a bubble that kept expanding; sometimes, when she reached out her arms to hold him, the bubble felt like all she could touch."

"He would have been the perfect man for some other, better version of herself."

and

"It felt not like a repetition of the previous triangle but a new version of it, from another angle. A pattern stretching across the recent years of his life."

(I was equally attached to all three characters, and so completely inhabited the perspectives as drawn that I missed things that I should have seen, if I'd had a reader's distance, and not been so engrossed in the story as relayed by the characters. In some ways this is wonderful, but there is a risk.)

Readers who enjoy psychological narrative, who appreciate stories preoccupied with "inside", even when they aren't overtly named as such, will be immediately at home with Alix Ohlin's novel.

The risk, however, is that insides are messy; the stories are told by those who have survived, and while there are moments of elation, there are moments of devastation. In that respect, it's not any different from anyone else's life.

(This discussion appeared on BuriedInPrint, in the context of the novel's shortlisting for the Giller Prize; you will find more detailed information about the novel here.) ( )

This is a story about taking control of your life, and living with the choices you make. It's about how we can never know what is really happening "inside" others.

This book didn't read like a novel; it was more a set of three inter-connected stories. I found that most of the characters lacked depth, and some of the situations were too contrived. Not bad overall, but not great. ( )

"Let me out!" (response to the book "Inside").
The novel is arranged into chapters focusing on several different characters in different years; it hops back and forth between years and character viewpoints. I like that style, for it promises various insights that sometimes are dependently available only with the distance of time and other events.
Two of the characters are therapists, and the others are intricately enveloped by a therapy fog that feels like a displaced novel of the 70s. When the reader has to suspend disbelief as a coping mechanism for the implausibility of some events, then one expects to be rewarded for the effort. But instead, more stupidities ensue.
Like the characters in the novel who had trouble committing, I had difficulties committing to the characters.
Two stars, elevated to three for occasional gem flashes of prose stylings. ( )

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When Grace, a highly competent and devoted therapist in Montreal, stumbles across a man in the snowy woods who has failed to hang himself, her instinct to help immediately kicks in. Before long, however, she realizes that her feelings for this charismatic, extremely guarded stranger are far from straightforward.

At the same time, her troubled teenage patient, Annie, runs away and soon will reinvent herself in New York as an aspiring and ruthless actress, as unencumbered as humanly possible by any personal attachments. And Mitch, Grace's ex-husband, a therapist as well, leaves the woman he's desperately in love with to attend to a struggling native community in the bleak Arctic. We follow these four compelling, complex characters from Montreal and New York to Hollywood and Rwanda, each of them with a consciousness that is utterly distinct and urgently convincing. With a razor-sharp emotional intelligence, Inside poignantly explores the manifold dangers and imperatives of making ourselves available to, and indeed responsible for, those dearest to us. Summary amazon.ca

A demanding book but also a rewarding one. Despite Oprah tagging it a "summer reading pick", Inside is not light fare. As an experienced and talented short story author, Ohlin skilfully interlaces the lives of her three main characters over a ten year period. Each of them, willingly or no, tries to help--sometimes save--someone else. Since Inside describes a realistic world, the outcomes are messy, frustrating and uncontrollable. In the midst of everything is growth.

A survivor of Rwanda, Tug is completely destroyed. He is a shell of a person. This is sad enough but when Grace insists on saving him, the reader knows with a gut lurching certainty that she will not succeed. Tug is excruciatingly true to life...my heart went out to him.

The contemporary, Canadian settings are refreshing. I hope to read more from Alix Ohlin!

8 out of 10 for quality prose and profound insight. Recommended to fans of literary, psychological and/or Canadian fiction. ( )

This finalist in the 2012 Giller Prize contest is a worthy entrant in this pretigious contest. I truly enjoyed it. Ms. Ohlin's characterizations were wonderful! The story is about four very strong characters. The time runs from 1996 to 2006, and the story is set in Montreal to New York to Inuvik to Los Angeles and Rwanda. A lot to cover in a not so very big book. But Ms. Ohlin does this handily. Her characters are totally believable and we get a front-row seat to all four characters' innermost thoughts and their motivations. I really don't know how Ms. Ohlin manages to do all this in 257 pages, but she does. And she manages to draw us into her storytelling web so that we actually feel like we are living with her characters. I highly recommend this book and fully understand why it was chosen as the iBooks book of the year. Totally engrossing as well as lyrically written. ( )

The stories of Grace, her ex-husband Mitch, her client Annie, and her lover Tug over a ten year period are interwoven to reveal the difficulty and desire of getting "inside" another person. Both Grace and Mitch are therapists, but have as much difficulty understanding each other and those in their lives as all the others. Complex characters, easy flow to the writing . ( )

Later in the book, one of the key protagonists asks herself, “What was worse than having to take responsibility for everything you did or felt or said? For the way your actions radiated out to change not just your own life, but those of the people around you?” This is a novel about how spontaneous and/or planned actions affect others, about how the interaction of individual needs, about how even with the best of intentions, the effects can be negative, about all the “presences and absences” that we all feel through life, about how it can be too late rectify mistakes because love changes and moves on when it is neglected.

I was, however, disappointed with the book. The narrative engages about half-a-dozen major characters and jumps back and forth in time (13 times) from 1994 to 2006 across Montreal (mainly), New York City, Kigali, and Los Angeles. If I hadn’t kept a chart, I don’t think I could have kept the various stages of the characters straight. I don’t mind having to work on a book that involves issues and themes that make you think, and flashback is a time-honoured writing technique to show earlier elements in character or issue development, but I think Ohlin overdid it in this context. And while I don’t feel that you have to “like” a character to appreciate him/her as an example of some aspect(s) of the human condition, none of the characters really seemed to dig into my feelings.

Not a bad book, but not one I would recommend as reading to a friend, and certainly not the best of the current list of finalists for the Giller Prize.

This book has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

There are three interconnected story strands: that of Grace, a well-meaning but rather inept therapist in Montreal; that of Annie, a young client of Grace’s who yearns to be an actress; and that of Mitch, Grace’s ex-husband who is also a therapist. There is not a linear plot: chapters move among the various characters and cover about a decade, although not chronologically.

I had difficulty keeping track of the characters, especially when a character might not be encountered for several chapters and then might be found in an earlier time period. I think I should have made notes to help me remember a character and his/her circumstances when he/she was next encountered. Admittedly, this may be more a factor of my middle age rather than a failing of the author.

All of the characters are deeply flawed. They all try to understand others, to get “inside” their heads, because, as Grace notes, “There is a difference between the facts of a person and the truth of him.” They all allow others “inside” their lives and try to help them. Some are motivated to travel far from home, to Rwanda and Nunavut, to help others. However, Grace, Annie and Mitch are selfish and rather pathetic, so it is not difficult to predict that their attempts to help will not always meet with success. Grace realizes that “your actions radiated out to change not just your own life, but those of the people around you.” Sometimes everyone suffers because of the efforts of someone trying to be helpful.

What the characters often seem to lack is self-knowledge; they don’t always spend sufficient time getting “inside” their own heads to examine their motivations. The reader is taken into the hearts and minds of Grace, Annie, and Mitch, but the three of them frequently are not fully aware of their own feelings and thinking processes. Of course, that’s what makes them totally human characters.

This is a good book, but I’m not convinced that it is worthy of the prizes for which it has been nominated. ( )

This was a book whose writing felt like it was liquid. The story wove three tails together and, frankly, was a bit of a throw away one. I enjoyed reading it but it isn’t sticking in the memory. 10/8 ( )

What happens inside, behind closed doors, in private moments, and in minds and hearts: that's the stuff of Alix Ohlin's novel.

"'He wouldn’t let me in,' she said, 'and I refused to stay out.'"

Mitch's mother says that of his father. She is not a character with whom readers spend a lot of time, but her statement resonates throughout Inside.

The characters with whom readers do spend time?

First, Grace, who is a therapist in Montreal, when readers meet her in 1996.

Next, Anne, to whom readers are introduced as one of Grace's patients when Annie is a teenager.

And Mitch, whose first appearance is in Grace's segment (she met him when he was a graduate student and she was beginning to study psychology), but readers meet him directly in Iqaluit, in 2006.

To varying degrees, each of these characters nestles in at least one of the other character's narratives. Where there is not a tangible overlap, there is a thematic overlap.

Grace, Anne, and Mitch are all struggling with what is inside, with what they keep inside, with what is inside the people they love. Also under consideration? Outside. How it's connected with inside, or the ways in which it's disengaged, questions about how the break(s) occurred.

It's a delicate balance. In life, and in the narrative.

"That’s how it went: one day lovely, the next flawed. In this respect, was it so much different from anybody else’s life?"

On a daily basis, perhaps not so much. One person's life is a lot like another's. There are ups and downs in working lives, romantic encounters, family life, and friendships: the details are interchangeable.

As Inside begins, the differences are apparent. Even the two therapists have starkly different workdays, from the outside.

(In under 300 pages, this novel manages to fully flesh out all three characters, complete with details about day-to-day life at home, work and their significant relationships: deftly drawn and wholly believable.)

Paradoxically, as the novel progresses, the insides begin to blur.

Some of the external differences remain distinct, though people's lives echo and intersect in the narrative too, but the emotional strain and struggle is almost interchangeable.

Readers looking for plot will be frustrated by the shifting perspectives and the sense of disconnection that arises if you are only observing the outsides of the characters' lives, which do overlap but not often enough to satisfy a plot-hungry reader.

The work's cohesion builds from the shared experiences in characters' insides. The bulk of the narrative's action is internal, viewed through each of these three character's experiences, and it is the gradual layering of emotional intensity, across their narratives, that roots Inside.

Each of the following passages is pulled from one character's perspective, but altering the pronouns allows them to fit with or reflect the other characters' experiences too:

"The gap between what he said and what she didn’t know swelled between them like a bubble that kept expanding; sometimes, when she reached out her arms to hold him, the bubble felt like all she could touch."

"He would have been the perfect man for some other, better version of herself."

and

"It felt not like a repetition of the previous triangle but a new version of it, from another angle. A pattern stretching across the recent years of his life."

(I was equally attached to all three characters, and so completely inhabited the perspectives as drawn that I missed things that I should have seen, if I'd had a reader's distance, and not been so engrossed in the story as relayed by the characters. In some ways this is wonderful, but there is a risk.)

Readers who enjoy psychological narrative, who appreciate stories preoccupied with "inside", even when they aren't overtly named as such, will be immediately at home with Alix Ohlin's novel.

The risk, however, is that insides are messy; the stories are told by those who have survived, and while there are moments of elation, there are moments of devastation. In that respect, it's not any different from anyone else's life.

(This discussion appeared on BuriedInPrint, in the context of the novel's shortlisting for the Giller Prize; you will find more detailed information about the novel here.) ( )

I started off not liking the book, but eventually I did find it hard to put down. I was pulled in, and it ending up being a fairly good book.

The story has a cast of some deeply flawed and damaged characters, it took a while to get into it, but some of their lives and how they got to where they were, was interesting to me. Captivating even, as they author brings to the surface some of the harsh realities the characters have faced, and how they choose to handle the decisions they made. This is a book that has a lot more to it than what you initially read, you almost have to dig deep to uncover everything that is contained in the book. I enjoyed Annie's story the most particularly how it ended, I think some readers wouldn't be happy with how hers ended, but I felt it very fitting. I think it's safe to say she was one of my favourite characters. I also enjoyed some aspects of Mitch's story line. He is a complex character, and he has a lot of issues, but I enjoyed some of his background, especially his time in Nunavut.

One of my main issues with the book were some of its characters, mainly Grace. I just couldn't stand her. I hated when the story was centralized around her. I was rather disgusted with how she was involved with Tug. It really bothered me, and I can't say for sure why. I didn't think she was a good psychiatrist, involving herself with Tug is part of the reason why. I had no sympathy for this character, and have some very strong feelings against her, and I can't pinpoint the exact reasons why. Her flaws, her inside turmoil, just didn't mesh for me. Compared to the other characters who all had demons, and troubled lives, as they tried to find themselves, she just didn't work for me.

One other issue I had with the book was how it was written. As it jumped around in time and setting, I found that it was hard to keep track of all the elements, especially the characters in the book, especially when they made appearances in other chapters (each chapter focused on a different character). For me the formatting of the book was more like a set of interconnected/inter-related stories, rather than a novel.

Overall the book turned out to be a good read, it's not one I loved, and it's not one I'd personally pick to win the 2012 Giller prize, but I do think it's going to be a contender, as it was a book that had a lot of hidden depth to its characters and overall storyline and one that would appeal to a lot of readers.

Also on my book review blog Jules' Book Reviews - Inside ( )

Just selected for the Canadian Giller longlist book prize.

In Inside we follow mainly three persons, the first two are both therapists - Grace and then her ex-husband Mitch - and the third is Karen, who runs away from home and is one of Graces patients. The novel shift back and forth in time.

There are several themes in the novel - one is about listening/responding/connecting - the other about helping each other or should I say the inability to offer real substantial help in many situations - hence the occupation as therapists of course - and the dramatic opening scene - these themes are very thoughtfully brought together in the intertwining stories - although it takes some time.

There's a lot of sleeping together - but very little real love of the kind where you give all to one person. Not the two-persons-becoming-one kind of love. The search for intimacy, for a real friend/husband/wife to understand you and listen to you is there, unsettling, as an ache in the characters. How much should one invest in the relationship?

And of course. How do you help when the other persons doesn't seem to want your help. What do you do? All three persons have these problems (and also the fourth one - in Rwanda). The novel addresses this in a profound way. Although the stories are sad the novel offers hope in the end I think - for some of the characters at least. ( )

Reviewed for Shelf Awareness for Readers (6/8/2012): http://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html?issue=101#m1983 ( )