Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

There are always two good things you can count on in a Taylor Jenkins Reid novel; a fantastic female protagonist, and an engaging storyline. Continuing this positive streak is her latest release, Atmosphere. Most of the time a little romance is also thrown in to her stories, but in a way that further develops the main characters, rather than overtakes them, and Atmosphere is no different. Her books aren’t romance novels, but they are definitely contemporary women’s fiction in the sense that they’re light, engaging, and compulsively readable. Back in 2017 (!) I recorded a quick video review of her breakout hit, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which deserves all the praise it got. I’ve enjoyed every single one of her books that I’ve read since then, you can read my reviews of Carrie Soto is Back here and Daisy Jones & The Six here.

Plot Summary

It’s 1980, and Joan has just been accepted into a space training program in Houston. She’s always dreamed of becoming an astronaut, and her hard work has finally paid off when NASA begins to encourage female applicants for the first time. Her life is fairly simple, she’s never been in love, and she spends the majority of her spare time with her young niece Frances. Joan’s sister Barbara had Frances when she was young, and struggles with being a single mother, so she has come to rely on Joan’s assistance in raising her daughter. It isn’t until Joan’s chances of becoming a full-fledge astronaut come a possibility that her personal life begins to struggle; Barbara is angry at her sister for not taking on as much as she used to with Frances, and Joan can’t stop herself from becoming closer and closer to Vanessa, a pilot-turned-astronaut in the same class as Joan. Finally realizing why she had never fallen in love until now, Joan fears the growing relationship between her and another woman threaten to endanger their dreams of entering space, but neither can help themselves, despite the risk. The book begins with an incident in outer space in 1984 and works back from that to tell the story of Joan’s journey to Mission Control, so the reader knows right away that Vanessa has made it into space, but may not make it back. Short flash forwards to this ill-fated space mission break up the back-on-earth drama that Joan and Vanessa find themselves in, and TJR leaves room for lots of potential twists that are never given away too early.

My Thoughts

A few serious issues are dealt with a light touch in this book. Like many TJR novels, women’s independence and success when compared to their male counterparts is a major theme that’s touched upon here, and she approaches it in two different ways. The first is the pressure on all the female trainees to succeed as the program opens up to women. Just before the first woman goes up in space, they discuss amongst themselves what’s at stake:

“There were four men on that shuttle. But every American woman was. Joan and Vanessa and Donna and Lydia – and so many people at NASA – were steadying themselves on the edge of a coin. It could be so easy for it all to go sideways. If it did, the backlash would be swift, and brutal. A wave overtaking all of them, each lost in the riptide.” (p.224 of Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid, ARC edition)

This pressure on the ‘first’ group of anything is immense, especially when others have been actively working to keep that same group out of those positions. TJR paints an accurate picture of what this pressure would do to a group of women, strangers, all fighting for their way into a highly coveted job. Some women actively sabotage their fellow female classmates while others simply put their head down and try to work ten times as harder to get ahead of their male counterparts. But their frustrations with each other are familiar to read about, especially the resentment when one woman laughs at the hurtful jokes her male classmates crack in an effort to become ‘one of the guys’. Is she betraying her female friends, or just trying to keep the peace? These complicated social dynamics add another serious layer to the story, while placing the reader back into that time period in a genuine way.

Even though the subtitle of the book is “A Love Story”, I wouldn’t call this a romance, simply because Joan and Vanessa’s love isn’t something that is able to take center stage. Although their story is playing out in an environment I will never know, the way their relationship and risks were depicted felt realistic to me. They were secretive and never voiced aloud what was happening to anyone but each other. Their fear is rooted in the potential of being kicked out of NASA, a government agency and a high profile position, but because they both dreamed of this job, it’s a sacrifice they are willing to make. They reason with each other that even if it wasn’t their careers, the ability to live openly with one another isn’t possible much of anywhere in America at that time, so their love story looks differently to others. Still, we follow Joan’s character in hopes she can achieve almost all of what she wants, and TJR delivers this in an entertaining and easy-to-read package.