Atmosphere: A Love Story *****
Taylor Jenkins Reid
Hutchinson Heinemann
Taylor Jenkin Reid’s new novel Atmosphere scores five gigantic, glorious, glittering stars. It’s a breathtaking experience rather than just a good read. It was surprising and unexpected because, going by the premise, it’s pretty much everything I would usually not want to read about: astrophysics, space travel, the technical universe that is Nasa, and a love affair.
Set against Nasa’s 1980s shuttle programme and the early days of taking on female astronauts, this book is a labour of love that pays off. The selection process, the training programme and the gruelling challenges to be endured by aspiring astronauts (such as wearing a space suit and being dropped into shark-infested seas with an open parachute landing on top of you) are all made visceral and real.
The book starts with a jolt — high above Earth, mid-spacewalk, the crew on board the Navigator shuttle experience an emergency. There are quite a few characters, and it all seems a bit chaotic and confusing at first. But please, dear reader, stick with it. Don’t give up.
We then wind back to be introduced to mission control captain Joan Goodwin. She is a brilliant astrophysics professor driven by her childhood devotion to the stars, but also to her beloved niece, Frances. Joan joined Nasa’s early female astronaut cohort, forged deep bonds with her peers, and then found unexpected love with colleague Vanessa Ford, an engineer and pilot.
The two timelines — one of rising hope and the other of a brewing space mission crisis — mirror each other beautifully, ratcheting up the tension throughout an emotional crescendo that ultimately culminates with devastating precision.
In a thoughtful interview in Time Magazine, Reid reflects on grappling with self-doubt throughout writing this book. At times she wanted to abandon the project entirely but was able finally to complete the novel after embracing collaboration and vulnerability.
She revealed that coming out publicly as bisexual deeply influenced her ability to write Joan and Vanessa’s romance. She also credits as inspiration the time she spent stargazing with her daughter Lilah, whose curiosity renewed Reid’s own cosmic wonder. In her touching acknowledgments, she describes Lilah as “my own forever Frances”.
The love story unfolds under the weight of institutional pressure and an unforgiving 1980s culture — in stolen glances and whispered jokes. Reid chose to focus on the joy in their relationship, balancing realism with tenderness, refusing to reduce it to trauma or tragedy.
Reid admits she bit off more than she expected when tackling Nasa’s technical universe. She spent a few months immersing herself in mission control at Johnson Space Center, toured the real-life shuttle and payload bay, and leant heavily on the expertise of legendary Nasa flight director Paul Dye, whose guidance informed everything from emergency procedure to astronaut psychology, before settling down to write.
How the human body adapts in space (cue lots of vomit) and how a mission can lead to one person seeing Earth as just a speck in the universe and another viewing it as home are carefully detailed. This novel is a meditation on ambition, identity and belonging — not just for those who yearn for space, but also for women in male-dominated fields.
Space is portrayed not only as physically weightless, but also as emotionally disorienting. Vanessa, floating untethered outside the shuttle during a crucial repair, describes how she feels simultaneously invincible but unbearably alone.
During her harrowing experience as a solo navigator after her crew is incapacitated in a critical incident, Vanessa must weigh up her chances of survival against her loyalty to crewmates and mission protocol.
The novel abounds in technical drama: oxygen levels, faulty airlocks, orbital mechanics, manual re-entry sequences, and astronauts as both instruments and people. All of this is refracted through emotional stakes: the characters’ bodies are stretched by g-forces, their minds required to stay calm when death is just one error away.
Atmosphere is a luminous testament to human perseverance: in science, in love, and in the courage to be seen. Reid has spun quiet ambition and systemic bias into something radiant.
The end is arresting — not with a sealing of fate or a tidy resolution, but with something to think about in the quiet after you close the book. This novel is fierce and tender, terrifying and consoling. It made me cry. It’s a powerful, unforgettable work that will stay with me.
