"A compact work of biblical noir . like "Bambi" directed by Quentin Tarantino . In Ether God is one of us: fickle, self-obsessed, senselessly malicious . Drink in Ehrenreich''s sculpted sentences . language for the weary and the dispossessed, the rich or the poor. Have a seat; stay awhile." --Margaret Wappler, Los Angeles Times "I found Ether to be the most creative moment in literature this last year."--Karl Travis, The Chico News and Review " Ether is a book made from rage.
Like Beckett''s engraver who ''alone had been spared'' because he saw only ashes, Ehrenreich is furious at the fallen world, where ''rain falls on the fields of the rich'' but drowns the poor, and where compassion and understanding are futile when they aren''t impossible. Ehrenreich puts his reader in place of both torturer and tortured, and the pain inflicted comes back at us in both directions, and sonorously. "-- John Cotter, The Quarterly Conversation "Ether is an usual road journey novel. For all its slimness, it tells the stories of a surprisingly vast array of characters . the setup here is more important than the journey or its resolution. A true ''writer''s writer,'' he doesn''t so much tell a story as imply it, using layers of characterization and subterfuge." -- HTML Giant "In the stylistically diverse world of contemporary literature, Ehrenreich''s works fall squarely into the postmodern camp. His stories have appeared in counterculture magazines such as McSweeney''s , and his debut novel, The Suitors (2006), presented a surreal retelling of Homer''s Odyssey .
In this slender new novel, Ehrenreich casts himself as a troubled first-person narrator clashing with his own characters, including the tale''s protagonist, an unnamed, disheveled stranger making his way through a postapocalyptic landscape. Bearded and badly soiled, if messiah-like, the stranger totes a mysterious wrapped package others covet. In a series of loosely connected vignettes, the stranger crosses paths with a wide variety of eccentrics and malcontents, including a cocaine-snorting bar patron who tempts him, a homeless bagman who idolizes him, and a gang of skinheads that brutally attacks him. Throughout a roving narrative filled with luminous yet often disturbing imagery, Ehrenreich freely interjects his own voice and ambivalent musings about his characters'' fates and motivations . Ehrenreich''s fans will be delighted." --Carl Hays, Booklist "A stranger walks into town ยท Lyrical and blindingly clear, Ben Ehrenreich''s Ether unfolds in dreamy simultaneous timescapes punctuated by flashes of violence. Moving between busses and bars, rail yards and suburbs, Ehrenreich''s novel depicts the teeming activity that persists in the world beneath an ether of numbness. Like a David Lynch movie transcribed by Pierre Reverdy, it''s a brilliant and unforgettable book, written somewhere between sleeping and waking.
" --Chris Kraus author of Torpor and Where Art Belongs "Ben Ehrenreich''s Ether is anything but. The descriptions pop. The world is rendered without qualification, without fear. The structure is challenging, refreshing, effective. This is an intense, intelligent novel novel that paints a vivid picture of an America that most of us refuse to see, are afraid to see. This is real art." --Percival Everett, author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier "A book that''s both pure as snow and filthy as dirt, with the lovely detachment of ice. Like Beckett, Ehrenreich has the talent of being particular and general at once, and thus steps outside time.
" --Lydia Millet, Pulitzer Prize finalist for Love in Infant Monkeys " Ether is a dark and powerful work, with disturbing metaphysical overtones. Ben Ehrenreich is a gathering power in the literary land." --John Banville, author of The Infinities and The Sea "Ben Ehenreich transforms the brutal human and urban blight into a landscape of cosmic battle. Ether is a dark, complex, richly written, beautiful novel. It is a rarity in American fiction today." --Frederic Tuten, author of Self Portraits: Fictions and Tintin in the New World "Ether, perhaps even more than his previous novel, The Suitors , shows Ben Ehrenreich unafraid of storytelling that is terrifically bold and sly. Ehrenreich seems to have returned from hiking the ruined wastelands and margins of Port-au-Prince and New Orleans, Mexico City and Los Angeles, Arizona and Phnom Penh, having cracked open the hard nut of the world. Or perhaps Ehrenreich himself has cracked, allowing him to tell this wild, eerie tale of forgiveness for blasted, shattered times.
Cries of seabirds from the Gulf of Mexico and pale forms of dying dolphins and porpoises glimmer darkly through it. But in Ether, the heart opens and shines a light, magnetic and acrid, smudged and infrared." --Sesshu Foster, author of World Ball Notebook and Atomik Aztex.