Is there a popular fiction writer alive who conveys falling in love better than Taylor Jenkins Reid? ... It would all feel a little passé if it wasn’t so well told. Taylor Jenkins Reid is great at creating characters that while they fit a stereotype, exist on the page as comfortably (or awkwardly) as readers imagine they would in real life.
You might think that a book as trite and self-aggrandising as this one would appeal to someone like me. Perhaps I just wasn’t in a good mood. Or perhaps it’s not a very good book ... You can fly through the short, sunscreen-greased chapters in an afternoon. But that’s not good enough for a behemoth like Reid, whose previous books I have enjoyed. A beach read (which given the release date is clearly what the publishers are gunning for) should slip down like a tangy, frosted cocktail. Whereas Atmosphere is like eating a bowl of broccoli—in space ... Part of the problem is Joan, a protagonist so maniacally accomplished...and alienatingly nice that you sympathise with her girlfriend for running off to space. Then there’s the progressive political messaging, which is about as subtle as a piece of moon rock to the skull ... So perhaps we could have survived without the Nike-style motivational slogans...and tortured metaphors ... When I interviewed Reid in 2022, she told me that “fun is not antithetical to substance.” In Atmosphere, just to make sure, she gives us neither.
Jenkins Reid’s use of modern phrases is jarring in this 1980s-set story of two women joining Nasa ... What was once an experiment has become the done thing: 1. opening teaser as close to the end as possible, 2. cut to much earlier in the story, 3. interweave the pursuit of both threads until they join definitively at the end. Atmosphere follows this formula ... She’s not a stylist, and that’s fine ... Her sentences convey character, setting and plot without drawing attention to themselves. Unhindered by the road bump of experimental prose, a casual reader might breeze past the insight often packed into short strings of words ... The humour is gentle rather than uproarious ... The novel’s feminism operates at a similar emotional temperature: friendly, with a tendency to flatter the 21st-century reader’s existing sensibilities, rather than to prompt any startling self-interrogation. ... When the language does embody the context, it’s thrilling ... I had only the vaguest clue what was happening and I loved it; the texture and energy mattered more than the exact meaning ... This book is an imperfect addition, but one that floats.
Reid masterfully ratchets up the tension in Atmosphere’s breathtaking final chapter, where the physical and emotional stakes couldn’t be higher, and where Earth, rather than space, may turn out to be the final frontier.
Even with the high-stakes action, the touching and surprising love story is the emotional heart of the book. A heart-pounding race against the clock combined with a love story adds up to a novel that’s impossible to put down.
