My husband selected this on Audible, which is a bit weird, but he thought it was a love story about the atmosphere!
Here’s the blurb …
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.
Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.
Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.
As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.
Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.
Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.
I have read one another novel by Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which I enjoyed but didn’t blog about (I have no idea why).
The relationship between Joan and Vanessa is beautifully written. The misogyny and discrimination in the 80s is well described (and therefore incredibly frustrating – how could people be treated that way?). The physics might be a little bit dodgy, but I enjoyed all of the references to the stars and the mythology about the stars. And really, this is a story about people and relationships and how we treat one another, not a text book on astrophysics.
No spoilers, but I wasn’t surprised by the ending (it’s a pretty standard ending).