Interesting Facts about Space
A Novel
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4.1 • 8 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A fast-paced, hilarious, and ultimately hopeful novel for anyone who has ever worried they might be a terrible person—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead.
Enid is obsessed with space. She can tell you all about black holes and their ability to spaghettify you without batting an eye in fear. Her one major phobia? Bald men. But she tries to keep that one under wraps. When she’s not listening to her favorite true crime podcasts on a loop, she’s serially dating a rotation of women from dating apps. At the same time, she’s trying to forge a new relationship with her estranged half-sisters after the death of her absent father. When she unwittingly plunges into her first serious romantic entanglement, Enid starts to believe that someone is following her.
As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her. Because at the end of the day there’s only one person she can’t outrun—herself.
Brimming with quirky humor, charm, and heart, Interesting Facts about Space effortlessly shows us the power of revealing our secret shames, the most beautifully human parts of us all.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In this heartfelt novel, the only thing more complicated than navigating modern love is understanding yourself. Enid is a twentysomething lesbian who’s as passionate about ethical non-monogamy as she is about outer space. But just as she finds an unexpected spark with a woman named Polly, she begins feeling paranoid that someone might be stalking her. Has her weird neighbour been breaking in? Is Polly’s ex watching the new couple? Author Emily Austin does an amazing job of making us understand how unresolved trauma can manifest as irrational fear—and why it so often pops up just when things are getting good. Enid is an eccentric, lovable, wonderfully sex-positive heroine, and we were right there with her even when her story went from feeling like a heartwarming rom-com to a potential spy thriller. This is a funny, tender, and relatable read that also includes lots of fascinating facts about the universe!
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The offbeat and delightful latest from Austin (Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead) plunges readers into the quirky and turbulent inner life of Enid, an employee at a NASA-like agency. The episodic narrative follows Enid, who is gay, through her daily routine as she reckons with her painful past. She bakes a gender reveal cake for her pregnant half-sister Edna, despite finding the practice "profoundly offensive"; obsessively streams true crime podcasts; worries a mysterious bald man is stalking her (she also has an unexplained fear of bald men); and dates a poly couple. Eventually, she cautiously enters her first serious relationship with Polly, the ex-wife of another woman she'd briefly dated, and begins to confront agonizing memories of her late father, who left her mother for another woman. Enid's preoccupation with random facts about space frequently appears in interactions with her mother ("Did you know astronomers found a planet without a star?" she asks her mother at the beginning of a phone call). Eventually, realizing she ought to deal with her phobia of bald men and her troubling memories, Enid begins seeing a therapist. The adventure inside her mind is engrossing, funny, and full of depth. Readers will fall for this unusual and lovable protagonist.
