Atmosphere
When Joan Goodwin was a child, she looked up at the night sky and fell in love with the stars. Now grown, she has applied to the NASA space shuttle program as an astronomer and is surprised and amazed to be accepted. She becomes unlikely friends with everyone in her class, including Vanessa Ford, a pilot and engineer. The novel follows Joan’s career, family, and life from 1980-1984 when events threaten the life of the one she loves.
I am not always one to pick up historical fiction, but I have been a fan of a few others of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s works including Carrie Soto is Back, Malibu Rising, and Daisy Jones and the Six. I also read so many rave reviews from trusted internet friends, that I decided to read it. The way I was immersed in Joan’s story of being a woman in NASA in the 1980s!
The subtitle on this one says, “a love story,” and that’s what it is. But what worked so well for me is that it is not only about Joan’s romance (something she never imagined herself having), but also about her love affair with the night sky, and arguably more than anything else, her relationship with her niece, Frances.
It touches on themes of gender disparity, grief, ambition, shared humanity across differences, and courage. The theme that struck me hardest was the concept of home, though.
Consider a quote:
“Nothing happening across Texas mattered to the universe. Joan had always known that. But, oh, how it mattered to her. It made the whole earth look bright and vital and urgent to her. It made that thin line of the atmosphere the most beautiful thing Joan had ever seen.
But as beautiful as it was, she wanted to feel it, and smell it, and taste it. She wanted to touch it in her hands.
Joan wanted to go home.”
When Joan finds herself achieving her lifelong dream of orbiting the earth in space, all she can think about is getting back to earth, back to her people. The theme that the mundane, boring stuff of life is what makes it worth living was a thread tying every bit of this thrilling and beautiful story together, and I loved that.
-
The romantic content in this book is what I would describe as fade-to-black and not explicit.
