Star rating: 4.25/5. Overall impression: heartwarming and personally relatable.

I went into this book with few expectations. I bought it on a whim after briefly searching for well-written romance books because I’d just finished The Goldfinch and needed something fluffy to recover from it. It was a popular recommendation and I’m a sucker for the themes identified in the blurb: Interesting Facts About Space explores the strange ways we try to connect with others, and the power of sharing our secret selves with the people we love. I’m a therapist. I LOVE thinking about human connection & sharing, and the stranger the better. There was no chance of me resisting a blurb like that.

At the end of it, I certainly wouldn’t describe the book as fluffy. It wasn’t as harrowing as The Goldfinch so at least it still provided some emotional recovery, but Enid (our protagonist) has a lot of complex mental health difficulties to address. Written in first-person, the book takes us along on an anxious, emotionally detached, and emotionally avoidant ride through grief, self-hatred, and relentless paranoia. The title itself is a reference to how Enid hides her emotional vulnerability through spouting off random facts about space instead of telling somebody that she cares about them or is feeling anxious. Emily Austin has the writing skills to somehow make this a fun ride. Especially when Enid’s paranoia centres around true crime (relatable) and bald men (hilarious).

Enid’s dry delivery carries the book. It’s funny when appropriate, and keeps her anxiety contained so that even when she’s having a panic attack due to a bald neighbour, the tone never slips into the melodramatic. On most pages we have gems like the following:

“My hobbies include listening to murder stories, having casual lesbian sex, and telling my mom interesting facts about space. I am not well-equipped to discuss skiing, sailing, and whatever other depraved hobbies occupy the time of opulent middle-aged white men.“

She’s detached without becoming sardonic. I’ve struggled with narrators whose cynicism of others can become almost cruel, and they lack the self-awareness to confront their own contempt and how it contributes to feeling alienated. Enid’s difficulty with others didn’t feel hateful; she’s anxious and she struggles to understand why other people think in the way that they do. She doesn’t hate them for it, she just doesn’t know how to feel okay enough with herself to bridge the gaps. She’s also self-aware enough to know that her problems are her own and she doesn’t try to pass them off to others, though of course this is intertwined with her own self-hatred. When the self-hatred is addressed, she finds herself connecting more easily.

Anybody who has a rudimentary knowledge/awareness of autism will have picked up on the autistic traits she exhibits (a diagnosis confirmed by her therapist towards the end of the book) but what I appreciate is that she’s written with complete empathy. It never feels like we’re laughing at her, rather just coming to love her as a character and the perspective that she offers on the world. Well, that was my experience anyway.

It’s also worth mentioning that this book could possibly stick in my mind as the thing that finally prompted me to go get an autism assessment. I already have a diagnosis of ADHD (which is how I’d explained a way a lot of my suspicions about autism), but I had way too many “oh… oh” moments when reading the process of Enid’s masking behaviours and how she’d feel before/during social interactions. Books that give me some sort of personal insight in a way that other books haven’t managed always get a bump in the star ratings.

There are two particularly defining moments in Enid’s life. The first being that her father (now deceased) left her mother and built another family, leaving Enid’s mother in a severe depressive cycle (I believe it was hinted that this was Bipolar Disorder). The other being that when Enid was a teenager, there was a fire at her school in which a boy was killed, and rumours were spread that Enid was the one who started it.

Enid’s father planted the idea that she was unlovable, and left her questioning what her half-siblings had that she didn’t. Crucially, he was quick to believe the rumours about the fire too, and the combination of his response, the bullying Enid experienced at the time, and her conviction that she’s a terrible person were internalised to the extent that she really did believe she started the fire. It becomes a traumatic memory that Enid avoids throughout her life, until pushed to confront it by her therapist. This finally unlocks the mystery of the bald man phobia: the boy killed in the fire was left with no eyebrows and had to wear a wig during the open casket funeral. Bald men became a symbol of the shame that Enid felt about the fire.

Despite how many mental health topics are addressed in the book, the exploration of them feels well-rounded. Enid and her best friend Vin bonded through their similar experiences of emotionally unstable and at times, suicidal mothers. Enid can’t allow herself to have anything other than casual sex because she’s convinced that if she allows people to get close to her, they’ll see that she’s actually a terrible person. She is trying to navigate the reconnection with her half-siblings after the death of her father whilst also being hyperconscious about the impact this could have on her mother. Like, these aren’t small issues to grapple with. They’re meaty, and I admire how Austin handles them with so much precision and warmth.

Despite romance being something I’d been looking for, the romance of this book ended up being the least interesting part of the plot. There was nothing wrong with it, but there was so much for Enid to work through that the development of her relationship with Polly fell into the background at times. Their meeting was memorable at least: after finding out about Enid’s affair with her wife, Polly comes to confront Enid but ends up crying in the shower whilst Enid washes her down instead. I will say that I appreciate how Polly wasn’t written to be a saviour, more so a straight-talking encourager for Enid to work through her issues. At no point did Austin try and frame it as though Enid & Polly’s relationship was the underlying motivator for Enid’s recovery. It also wouldn’t have made sense – the highly avoidant Enid at the start of the book was in no psychological place to be rescued. Not unlike a cat, Enid needed a person who showed up consistently and took emotional intimacy at a slow pace. Polly was perfectly written for the role.

The only issue I really took with the book was its pacing. It was slow at times, and considering how all-encompassing Enid’s anxiety could be, this felt a little painstaking. Then it felt like we got a ton of forward movement and revelations in the final 30 or so pages of the book and I was left feeling like I’d been swept up in an emotional tornado.

Emily Austin has a few other novels (all with equally fun and quirky titles) but the only other that I’ve actually heard of is Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead. Interesting Facts About Space has only encouraged me to delve into more of her work – I’ll add it to the rest of my gargantuan to-read pile.