Inside
by Alix Ohlin
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Fiction. Literature. HTML:“A skillful storyteller . . . attractively quick-witted and wry.” —J. M. Coetzee“Ohlin has a great eye, a great ear, and all the other equipment auguring a very successful future.”—Jay McInerney
“Expect to hear her spoken of in the same reverent breath as Lorrie Moore and Joy Williams.” —Heidi Julavits
From the highly acclaimed author of The Missing Person and Babylon and Other Stories, a resonant novel of entwined lives and a woman with an show more unsettling ability to broach the innermost dynamics of the people around her.
When Grace, an exceedingly competent and devoted therapist in Montreal, stumbles across a man who has just failed to hang himself, her instinct to help kicks in immediately. Before long, however, she realizes that her feelings for this charismatic, extremely guarded stranger are far from straightforward. In the meantime, her troubled teenage patient, Annie, runs away from home 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, who is 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 razor-sharp emotional intelligence, Inside poignantly explores the many dangers as well as the imperative of making ourselves available to—and responsible for—those dearest to us.
This ebook edition includes a Reading Group Guide. show less
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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, show more 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.) show less
"'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, show more 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.) show less
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, show more 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.) show less
"'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, show more 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.) show less
I really enjoyed Alix Ohlin's novel, which centres on the lives of four troubled and complex characters. The book is a Giller finalist, but I've been persuading people who typically avoid reading "literature" to read this book. The book is very accessible and is a touching and page-turning read. The application of psychology, and the desires we humans feel to help others, [to save others], is key for the novel. The book looks at very real and terrible issues, such as suicide, teen pregnancy, sexuality, and one's self-worth.
The narratives are very distinct and will draw the reader into the troubled lives of Grace, Mitch and Annie. Inside is a touching and memorable read that stuck with me long after I finished it. The book is show more well-written and the plot lines of the characters support each other while also stand on their own as their own realistic and slightly tragic story.
There is a darkness to everyone, even if you can't see it. The book puts a lot of weight on that you can't always see what's going on inside a person. You can't know their darkest secrets and what's weighing them down. You can't always help someone, no matter how hard you try. The world is a bitter and difficult place and not everyone copes well with the problems life deals us.
The characters were easy to imagine in my mind. I felt like I knew them and sometimes, that I was suffering along with them. As someone who has seen and dealt with friends and family who have suffered silently and alone with depression, anxiety, and the like, this novel really hit home with me.
This book was fantastic and a worthy contestant for the Giller! Ohlin is a talented writer, capable of weaving an intense and emotional story that will stay with you. I expect she will continue to provide wonderful pieces of Canadian literature. show less
The narratives are very distinct and will draw the reader into the troubled lives of Grace, Mitch and Annie. Inside is a touching and memorable read that stuck with me long after I finished it. The book is show more well-written and the plot lines of the characters support each other while also stand on their own as their own realistic and slightly tragic story.
There is a darkness to everyone, even if you can't see it. The book puts a lot of weight on that you can't always see what's going on inside a person. You can't know their darkest secrets and what's weighing them down. You can't always help someone, no matter how hard you try. The world is a bitter and difficult place and not everyone copes well with the problems life deals us.
The characters were easy to imagine in my mind. I felt like I knew them and sometimes, that I was suffering along with them. As someone who has seen and dealt with friends and family who have suffered silently and alone with depression, anxiety, and the like, this novel really hit home with me.
This book was fantastic and a worthy contestant for the Giller! Ohlin is a talented writer, capable of weaving an intense and emotional story that will stay with you. I expect she will continue to provide wonderful pieces of Canadian literature. show less
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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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
Ohlin's project is quite ambitious: retracing the complex lives of three characters through various ages. She does this with some success, delving into the inner thoughts and emotions, explaining behaviours and heart-aches through experiences, tenuously linking the lives of the characters as they touch each other in seemingly profound ways.
Curiously, however, that is not enough. There is too much explaining about who the characters are and where they come from, but they don't grow into who they are; they are merely the product of their experiences. There is a reflection on life and death, its mysteries, but that ultimate question: "what are birth and death?" is left unanswered, leaving the book without substance and the end flat.
While I show more enjoyed reading it, and felt kindly towards the characters and their plights, this is not a book that will stay with me. show less
Curiously, however, that is not enough. There is too much explaining about who the characters are and where they come from, but they don't grow into who they are; they are merely the product of their experiences. There is a reflection on life and death, its mysteries, but that ultimate question: "what are birth and death?" is left unanswered, leaving the book without substance and the end flat.
While I show more enjoyed reading it, and felt kindly towards the characters and their plights, this is not a book that will stay with me. show less
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ThingScore 71
Alix Ohlin's dynamic new novel "Inside" begins like a thriller: The body of a man is face down in the snow, discovered by a lone skier just as daylight is fading. Only the man isn't dead; he's a frustrated suicide who tried to hang himself from a tree on a lonely mountainside near Montreal, only to have the branch give way. Tug probably would have died of hypothermia if a highly competent show more therapist named Grace hadn't stumbled upon him a few minutes later. The intrigue is immediate; why did Tug want to die and why is seemingly sensible Grace so irresistibly drawn to him? show less
added by kidzdoc
Alix Ohlin, who already has one promising novel and two short-story collections behind her, possesses an unsettling gift for the quotidian — the lulling, soothing quality of everyday life and speech — even as the most awful things occur. She writes about well-mannered, well-educated people, and surprisingly often, they choose the suicidal way out, a cosmic way of saying, “Excuse me, show more may I leave the room?”
There are four main characters in her new novel, “Inside”: Grace Tomlinson, a psychologist who has devoted her life to helping people; Mitch Tomlinson, her ex-husband and also a therapist, who takes Grace’s altruism to a national level and tries to save societies; John “Tug” Tugwell, who saw awful things when he was with a non-governmental organization; and Annie Hardwick, a much younger woman and client of Grace’s who wants to make it in the movies. Ohlin braids these lives together, although it must be said that Annie seems an uncomfortable addition, someone tacked on to balance out the comparatively mature — and glum — older folks. show less
There are four main characters in her new novel, “Inside”: Grace Tomlinson, a psychologist who has devoted her life to helping people; Mitch Tomlinson, her ex-husband and also a therapist, who takes Grace’s altruism to a national level and tries to save societies; John “Tug” Tugwell, who saw awful things when he was with a non-governmental organization; and Annie Hardwick, a much younger woman and client of Grace’s who wants to make it in the movies. Ohlin braids these lives together, although it must be said that Annie seems an uncomfortable addition, someone tacked on to balance out the comparatively mature — and glum — older folks. show less
added by kidzdoc
Alix Ohlin’s wondrously engrossing second novel, “Inside,” and her second collection, “Signs and Wonders,” display her characteristic strengths — dynamic plots, keenly observed settings, and characters so idiosyncratic, ambivalent, and contradictory they could be your family, your neighbors, people you work with. She is particularly insightful when portraying couples navigating the show more raw and unpredictable emotional landscape of separation and divorce.
Ohlin tends to plunge right into the heart of the action. In the opening section of “Inside,’’ set in Montreal in 1996, Grace, a therapist who is one of four main characters in the novel, is cross-country skiing on Mount Royal. She is enjoying the “muffled silence and solitude” when she runs into a man on the ground. Kneeling to check his pulse, she sees the rope around his neck. For reasons she is unclear about herself, she follows Tug, the failed suicide, to the hospital, helps sign him out, drives him home, and stays the night to make sure he doesn’t try again.
Ohlin traces their growing relationship in a series of finely wrought scenes, shifting backward and forward in time, offering many surprises. There is a ringing authenticity to the ways in which Grace and Tug, both gun-shy after failed marriages, collide, connect, spin apart, and try again. Equally solid are the passages in which Ohlin traces the roots of Grace’s empathy for the suffering, and of Tug’s despair over what he had witnessed as an aid worker in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.
Ohlin also follows Anne, one of Grace’s patients, from age 16, in 1996, into early adulthood when she is living on New York’s Lower East Side, building a career as an actress. Anne’s precarious childhood has made her a master of deception; her acting is fueled by the “secret high that came from thinking none of them knew her at all.”
The question of meaning hovers over Ohlin’s work. She has a rare gift for examining the confusions of the 21st century, exploring the ways in which addictions, afflictions, attractions, and random impulses shape our lives. Her intense and beautifully shaped new novel and stories offer tentative yet illuminating answers. show less
Ohlin tends to plunge right into the heart of the action. In the opening section of “Inside,’’ set in Montreal in 1996, Grace, a therapist who is one of four main characters in the novel, is cross-country skiing on Mount Royal. She is enjoying the “muffled silence and solitude” when she runs into a man on the ground. Kneeling to check his pulse, she sees the rope around his neck. For reasons she is unclear about herself, she follows Tug, the failed suicide, to the hospital, helps sign him out, drives him home, and stays the night to make sure he doesn’t try again.
Ohlin traces their growing relationship in a series of finely wrought scenes, shifting backward and forward in time, offering many surprises. There is a ringing authenticity to the ways in which Grace and Tug, both gun-shy after failed marriages, collide, connect, spin apart, and try again. Equally solid are the passages in which Ohlin traces the roots of Grace’s empathy for the suffering, and of Tug’s despair over what he had witnessed as an aid worker in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.
Ohlin also follows Anne, one of Grace’s patients, from age 16, in 1996, into early adulthood when she is living on New York’s Lower East Side, building a career as an actress. Anne’s precarious childhood has made her a master of deception; her acting is fueled by the “secret high that came from thinking none of them knew her at all.”
The question of meaning hovers over Ohlin’s work. She has a rare gift for examining the confusions of the 21st century, exploring the ways in which addictions, afflictions, attractions, and random impulses shape our lives. Her intense and beautifully shaped new novel and stories offer tentative yet illuminating answers. show less
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Author Information
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2012
- People/Characters
- Grace Tomlinson; Mitch Tomlison; John "Tug" Tugwell; Annie Hardwick
- Important places*
- Montréal, Québec, Canada; New York, New York, USA; Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada; Kigali, Rwanda; Los Angeles, California, USA
- First words
- At first glance, she mistook him for something else.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)She smiled at him in the winter dark, and then invited him inside.
- Publisher's editor*
- Anansi
- Blurbers
- Beverly Lowry; Keith Scribner; Robin Romm
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 210
- Popularity
- 154,809
- Reviews
- 15
- Rating
- (3.52)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 13
- ASINs
- 3
