Atmosphere

 Atmosphere is the first novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid to be reviewed in this blog. She has written at least five other novels. I found this on my Kindle and read Atmosphere while on a long airplane flight. The author certainly captured the thrill of learning about the sky and stars, and she clearly created a story of space flight that is entirely believable and a tragedy that seemed very real. The plot is about that tragedy in space and the attempts by a former astronaut and a current astronaut to bring the space shuttle safely back to earth. The story was about the CAPCOM, the only person on the ground from NASA who talked with the astronauts in the shuttle, and others who were a part of NASA. Joan Goodwin was the first woman to have done so. 

Reid explored the efforts of Joan, who seemed to be on the spectrum of autism, something formerly called Asperger’s Syndrome. She had no real relationships with anyone other than her niece, had no significant connection to her sister or her mother. Joan had never had a boyfriend. She was in love with her work. Joan was also the victim of the rampant misogyny at NASA. It was the same with her classmates in astronaut training group #9, Vanessa Ford. Ford was a mechanic and pilot, but she was assigned to be second seat during training and was told she would never be allowed to fly the shuttle. I thought the various roles of different students and their different personalities was well-presented and it clearly contributed to the plot development. Reid wrote convincingly of the fire that killed three astronauts as they trained for Apollo I, an event that was used effectively to impress the fictional astronauts and this reader of the dangers these astronauts-in-training agreed to accept.

 

When she finally got her chance to go to space, Joan quickly discovered that the extended weightlessness of space was simply something she could not tolerate. She kept vomiting most of the duration of her trip. She made a decision to transfer out of the astronaut group and into the space command center. It was at about the halfway point of this compelling story that Joan discovered that she was gay, and that led to a relationship with Vanessa, a relationship that they had to hide if their careers at NASA were to continue. Reid wrote with relish about Joan’s awakening to the world about her and the meaning of her relationships with her niece, sister and mother, it was as if she was fully emerging from her Asperger’s. However, it was not only NASA that had to be kept in the dark about her love of Vanessa, it was also her own family.  So after the disaster happened in space and Joan was the only one who could feed Vanessa the data she needed to bring the shuttle back from orbit, the drama of the story ramped up even more. The title of this book is surely a double entendre which has been artfully applied by the author.