Atmosphere
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
ISBN-13: 9780593158715
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2025
- Date Started
- Aug 15, 2025
- Date Completed
- September 5, 2025
- Shelves
- Read Would Read Again
- One Sentence Summary
- Evocative sci-fi novel centered on NASA's astronaut training program that explores the delicate balance between professional ambition and personal development; features a queer love story and a high-intensity orbital calamity.
- Why I Chose This Book
- I'd previously read Evelyn Hugo, and I wanted to see what the author would do with a different genre/setting.
- Any surprises?
- The parallel exploration of family dynamics via the narrator's relationship with her neice and her sister was unexpected and deeply moving. The story also closely parallels real-life experiences of women in the astronaut program and provides a nuanced narrative approach to a story often reduced down to news/science reporting.
- Lingering Questions
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How will others understand me if I cannot understand myself?
What is the appropriate way to counter-narrate or resist misogynist and homophobic stereotypes in the workplace, especially if the workplace is a high-stakes, high-pressure environment like NASA?
Why do we allow ourselves to act as if our identities are fixed and immutable, when in reality they are fluid and evolving?
How do we balance our personal ambitions with our familial relationships, friendships, and emotional needs?
How expansive can we make our notions of divinity, purpose, or meaning (through e.g. education, life experience) before we find ourselves alienated from the original forms of those ideas? Can we ship-of-Theseus our value systems?
- Notes
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I grew up in John Glenn's hometown, and NASA and the astronaut corps were something of a local obsession. Sally Ride was my hero when I was a kid, and this book could almost be a fictionalized account of her very trajectory through the ASCAN program.
- Strengths
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- Tags
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character-driven emotional immersive lgbtq+