Book Review: Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin

The latest book by Canadian author Emily Austin titled Interesting Facts About Space may not have as clever a title as her last book, Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead, but its got the same sense of quirky humour and another slightly relatable and memorable protagonist. Both her books are very similar in that feature a young woman with serious mental health issues. These aren’t issues that our society generally finds acceptable like the famous ‘shopaholic’ book series or something similar; the problems these women face prevent them from leaving the house on some occasions, so they tend to be isolated. Yet Austin’s style of writing prevents this from becoming a serious book, despite the serious problems faced. It remains heartwarming, even lighthearted, to the point that I could slot this novel into the contemporary women’s fiction side of the shelf, and feel that’s an appropriate designation.

Plot Summary

Enid has lots of things going for her; she’s extremely intelligent and works at the space agency doing something she enjoys. She loves space, she loves true crime podcasts, and she loves her mother, whom she has a strong relationship with. Enid is a serial dater, hooking up with random women through dating apps and dumping them whenever someone gets too close. She struggles with a growing suspicion that someone is spying on her, and is afraid to spend too long in the hallway of her apartment because of this. In particular, she is afraid of bald men: terrified of them in fact. She can’t speak to bald men, she doesn’t even like looking at bald men. There is a bald man at her work who just started there, and he’s supposed to be working with Enid on a project, but she keeps avoiding him because she can’t bear the thought of talking to him, to the point that it feels like her job may be in jeopardy. Her father abandoned her and her mother when she was young and started a new family with another woman, having two more daughters with them, but after his passing, Enid’s half-sisters have reached out and are trying to build a relationship with Enid. These small anxieties are building up in Enid’s life, but it’s not until she uncovers something about her childhood with her therapist that she begins making progress in moving past these difficulties.

My Thoughts

Austin’s writing is what takes this book from something unnecessarily maudlin to bright and hopeful. It’s not unrealistic, but it doesn’t dwell in the pain that Enid navigates in her own life. From the very beginning of the book we are introduced to a woman who is delightfully quirky:

“My tampon box is peeking over my bag like a pervert peeking over a windowsill. As I exit the store, I try to strategically position my arm to conceal the box and prevent strangers from knowing which stage of the ovarian cycle I am at.”

-p.3 of Interesting Facts About Space by Emily Austin, ARC edition

Her fears of bald men are obviously odd, but made even odder by the fact that she is obsessed with listening to hours of true crime podcasts. She revels in the gory descriptions of kidnappings and dismemberments, but the idea of ordering a coffee from someone with no hair is beyond her capabilities. Austin doesn’t use Enid’s issues as a laughing point however, she simply juxtaposes these opposing sides of her personality to help build a character with enough facets that she becomes fully whole in the reader’s eyes.

Although there are some noteworthy developments in Enid’s life, this book doesn’t culminate in a typical climax. It plods along at a fairly regular pace, and ends with this same pacing. It’s not boring, simply because Enid’s mental health challenges create an air of suspense that gives the reader the feeling that a part of her life is on the verge of falling apart, but it doesn’t tie up anything neatly either. In this sense it’s a fairly realistic look at mental illness and how one copes with it over a lifetime. Austin is adept at making this a palatable book despite it’s serious undertones, and many folks, especially those who are younger, will be able to relate to Enid.