Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is very good at what it’s trying to do, I just wish it had been trying something a little different.
As with all my reviews, I’ll be objective about the writing technicalities, and specify where I feel something is valid but not to my taste. My final rating will be an average of my objective score and my personal opinion.
There are no spoilers in this review.
So what is it?
short_synopsis
In the 1980’s, a group of women join NASA in the hope of fulfilling their ambition of going to space, only to find something more important to them.
plot
The book begins with several characters in a perilous situation in a space shuttle, then flashes back to show how they got there. It switches between the timelines on only a couple of occasions until they converge at the end, and there’s a long stretch in the second half where we focus solely on the flashbacks. I think another visit (or two) to the shuttle would have given the story a better balance, but the crux of the story is in the flashbacks, not on the shuttle.
Starting with the perilous situation grabs the reader’s attention immediately, but there is a trade off: if the same scene had been shown later, in timeline order, after we’d got to know the characters involved, it would have had greater emotional impact. This isn’t a criticism, and I understand the choice, but I did slightly regret what could have been (a running theme in this book).
The subtitle on the front cover of “a love story” is apt because, whilst there’s a decent amount of time spent at NASA learning the astronaut ropes, as the story progresses it becomes more and more about the female relationships and any space travel is skipped over.
I believe this was a choice by the author as the characters’ priorities shifted from their astronaut goals to their relationships. That’s fine, but any readers who are more interested in the space stuff should be aware it isn’t the heart of this story.
This is a predictable book. I only remember two surprises: the first was during the opening perilous situation; the second was disappointment at an omission at the end, when an oft-repeated character goal was left unfulfilled by cutting off the final chapter before it could happen. I understand why the book ended where it did, but I think it would have been better to have not set it up at all if we weren’t going to see it completed.
people
The story is told in the third person, from the perspective of one person: Joan. She’s very earnest, intelligent, honest, responsible, and sensible, verging on too perfect.
In fact, very few of the main characters have anything you could describe as a flaw. I wonder if this was intentional, putting astronauts on a pedestal. For me, it detracted from the story.
It isn’t about any one character individually, though, it’s about the relationships. Two lesbians. Aunt/niece. Two sisters. Whilst I couldn’t shake the feeling it was precisely engineered to provoke emotions by following a well-trodden formula, it worked. I did become invested and I did get all the feels.
place
The book is set in the early 1980s and it does a good job of feeling like it throughout. Cultural references to music, movies, and fashion are all there, and so is the prevailing attitude to any non-heterosexual relationship, which plays a major role in the story.
The spotlight is very much on the characters and how the wider world impacts them; everything else outside the core group is kept in the shade.
prose
This was an easy and quick read. Even when it was necessary to get a little technical, it never got complicated.
The writing style could be described as brisk and efficient. There are some nice descriptive passages, but it feels like every unnecessary word was trimmed and that it was written to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. This isn’t a criticism; my personal preference is for a bit more, but this style worked for this book.
I felt sometimes it was a little too direct, and characters were a little too upfront about their feelings, but that might be my uptight British perspective.
conclusion
The disappointments I had with this book weren’t that it was bad, more that there are things I would have done differently. I felt like it could have been one of my favourite reads but just missed because it was aimed at a different audience. And that’s fine. I’ll still remember it fondly.
At points when I was writing this review, I felt like I was nit-picking: this often happens when I think a book is really good and I’m looking for any reason I shouldn’t give it five stars. I don’t give top marks easily or often, and this teetered between a four and a five.
In the end, I have to score this on what it’s trying to be and what it wants to achieve. And it nails it.
I’d recommend this to anyone who likes romance between two women.
If your interest in this book is mostly in the space side of things, prepare for there to be less and less about it as you read, but also prepare to be swept along in the relationships anyway.
My score: 5 out of 5
A list of the book reviews posted to my blog is here.
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