Trust your bookseller. The owner of Curiosity House Books put this in my hands, an ARC that she thought I would like. It took me a year to pick it up, and less than a day to read, and I’ll remember it forever. Maybe it’s perfect timing, but I think Emily Austin has written a near-perfect book.
Interesting Facts About Space is narrated by Enid, is the type of person you might call ‘a weird cat’. She’s a 26-year-old woman who is neurodivergent, deaf in one ear, obsessed with true crime podcasts, and works at the National Space Agency as a coder of some sort. Here’s how she describes herself early in the story, as she’s pulled into a work meeting:
Being in this room requires I participate in small talk with people I have nothing in common with. They alway ask me if I golf. My hobbies include listening to murder stories, having casual lesbian sex, and telling my mom interesting facts about space. I am not well-equipped to discuss skiing, sailing. and whatever other depraved hobbies occupy the time of our-lent middle-aged white men.
That’s actually a pretty concise summary of most of the book. Enid’s family is complicated, her friends are generally supportive, and her relationships are short-lived, though she mostly torpedoes them herself. Sounds a little like Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and it’s about the highest praise I can give this book to say that I enjoyed this every bit as much as Oliphant.
In this interview with CBC, Austin talks about the process of writing the book. The whole interview is good, but this part made me laugh:
…when I set out to write a book, my original intention is to write something funny. And I don’t normally succeed at that. I end up writing something that’s partially funny, but I write a lot about mental health and there’s a bit of darkness to it. But my intention is always to write something funny. And so when I came up with the premise that I wanted the main character to have a phobia, I thought, I’m gonna find a phobia that sounds funniest to me. And that one was listed. So I thought, that’s the one I’ll go with.
What made this book perfect, just fucking perfect, is the kindness and generosity of all of the characters in this book. Enid is a strange one, but she never hides her strangeness, and the people around her genuinely value her. Even her wicked stepmother isn’t all bad.
There’s a bunch of plot in the last 50 pages that I didn’t expect: it ties together a bunch of elements in the story in a satisfying (and made me tear up pretty good). These days are particularly anxiety-inducing for me (and surely not just me), and Interesting Facts About Space was a warm and sweet escape from all of it.
Also: Moons can have moons, and they’re called moon moons.
The songs in here are referenced in the Austin’s acknowledgements at the end. A few of them are new to me, and they suit the story perfectly. If this book-writing thing doesn’t work out for Emily, maybe she’ll help with the music picks around here.
Further reading
The author on being generous to others and being blind in one eye
On reading what she wrote as a teenager, on the website of the bookshop where I got the book(!)
Books recommended by the author (the ones on that list that I’ve read I’ve generally liked, but not nearly as much as this one)
And this, which was part of the Shortlist last week:
What the Dead Leave Behind by Emily Austin
I just finished reading Austin’s novel Interesting Facts About Space, and on her website she links to this essay about home and personal identity. It’s lovely:
There is a truth to life that is difficult to access if you are not grieving or depressed. If you find you have looked behind the curtain and seen that truth, try to walk even further behind the stage.
