Book Review: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
There’s nothing quite like a book about space travel to remind us just how tiny our place in the cosmos is. Atmosphere – the latest novel by Daisy Jones and the Six author Taylor Jenkins Reid – is set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program and it’s a book that’s impossible to read without reflecting on the smallness of humanity compared to the immovable stars above. And yet, through the soaring love story at the very heart of the book, it also shows just how important we are too. We may be mere specks to the universe, but we are the universe to someone – a sentiment that Reid explores with a tenderness that’ll make your heart ache for her characters.
Moving between the present and the past, the novel begins in December 1984 as astronaut Joan Goodwin arrives at Houston’s Johnson Space Center for her job in Mission Control. As CAPCOM, Joan is the only person who speaks directly to the crew up in space. But when a catastrophic accident occurs during Joan’s watch, everything changes in an instant. Back in the summer of 1980, we meet Joan as an astrophysics professor whose dreams of being an astronaut are finally within her grasp. We follow her as she embarks on NASA’s training program alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond, mission specialists John Griffin, Lydia Danes and Donna Fitzgerald, and enigmatic aeronautical engineer Vanessa Ford.
Joan is driven, determined and exceptionally smart. She’s also kind, inquisitive, calm under pressure and a genuine team player. She has all the qualities needed to be an astronaut but the one thing Joan’s always struggled with is her understanding of herself. She knows her own mind but her heart is another matter. She’s no stranger to love. She loves her parents, her sister Barbara, her niece Frances. But love in the romantic sense has always been something of a mystery to her. Until she meets cool and collected Vanessa. Slowly, everything begins to click into place for Joan. And so begins not just her voyage of discovery in space, but her journey to understand the pieces of herself that she never knew existed.
Well, we are the stars… And the stars are us. Every atom in our bodies was once out there. Was once a part of them. To look at the night sky is to look at parts of who you once were, who you may one day be.“
Transporting readers to a pivotal time and place in recent history, Atmosphere weaves together themes of space, love, friendship, sacrifice and acceptance to create a novel that feels as iconic as the era it’s set in. Astrophysics and aerospace engineering are complex, intricate subjects that don’t always feel accessible for readers without a vast knowledge of space travel. But Reid not only makes it easy to understand but genuinely fascinating. She packs her novel with realistic, well-researched detail about the tough training astronauts go through, and also what their daily lives are like too. How do they maintain relationships, start families, be there for the people who need them on earth when their entire lives revolve around venturing into space?
Atmosphere is also a novel that explores a woman’s place in the world, specifically during the 1980s, when women were only just being accepted into space programs. A woman’s role was still very much the wife and homemaker but the characters in this book are determined to break out of the stereotypes men have created for them. In Joan, Vanessa, Donna and Lydia, Reid has crafted a quartet of incredible women who feel like genuine role models. Not every child wants to fly planes or study science or go into space, but they should all have the courage and strength to do what they want and be who they want to be. In Joan’s sweet and nurturing relationship with her niece, we see just how important it is to instill knowledge and foster curiosity in the younger generation. To show them that they are valued and accepted, always, without conditions.
Joan and Frances’s close bond is a lovely part of the book but the true highlight of Atmosphere is the relationship between the brilliant and endearing team of astronauts at the centre of the story. Not just the beautifully written central romance but the affection and camaraderie between them all. It means that when something bad happens – and it’s not a spoiler to share that devastating things do happen in this novel – it’ll crack your heart wide open. But the transformative power of Reid’s storytelling also means that there’s enough love between the pages of this book to stitch up those cracks before you reach the end. Atmosphere is at once epic and intimate, heart-wrenching and hopeful. It’s an escapist novel of the best kind with a final few pages that will leave you utterly breathless.
★★★★★
Atmosphere is published by Hutchinson Heinemann on 3 June 2025
