Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Source of book: I own this

 

This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. This book is one I would not have automatically picked up. Our club did previously read and discuss another book by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones and the Six, which turned out to be the first of several meetings we had via zoom due to the pandemic. 

 

As I noted in my post about that book, I’m not sure Reid is exactly my cup of tea, but I don’t hate her books either. The thing that ties both of these books together is that they are sort of about real people and events, but also not entirely, and everything is very fictionalized and done with a lot of artistic license. 

 

In the former case, it was kinda sorta about Fleetwood Mac, more or less. This one is about astronaut Sally Ride, kinda sorta more or less. 

 

The way I look at it is that Reid took the real life Sally Ride, split her into two characters, and imagined an alternative story involving her. 

 

The real Sally Ride, of course, was a legend. The first American woman in space, and by all accounts one of the most badass astronauts - and physicists - of all time. She then went on to work for nearly a decade at Mission Control, directing dozens of missions. She is the one person to serve on the commissions investigating both space shuttle disasters, and was quite vocal in calling out the issues in NASA’s safety culture, which also suffered from “good old boy” network of looking the other way. 

 

After leaving NASA, she was an educator and researcher for most of the rest of her life, before dying too soon of cancer. 

 

It wasn’t until after she died that the fact that she was a lesbian became known to the public. Yeah, sure, there were some rumors, and close friends knew. But her decades-long relationship with Tam O’Shaughnessy was only revealed in her obituary - and Ride left that decision to her partner. 

 

In some ways it is surprising that she never came out publicly during her lifetime. It was understandable in the 1980s, but by the 2000s, it probably would have been met mostly with a yawn. 

 

All of those facts above are in some way important to the book. Reid weaves the facts into imaginative inspiration. 

 

Before I get into the plot, I want to state a few things first. 

 

This book, like the other Taylor Jenkins Reid book I read, explicitly requires “"that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” (H/t Samuel Taylor Coleridge) The ending is beyond implausible, both in how it happens and that it happens at all. Just accept that and go with it. Or, like some of our club, you may have preferred a tragic ending, and that is fine too.

 

Second, I personally find Reid frustrating because she can be so good in her research at times, and then just fall absolutely flat on her face in an avoidable way. I know this isn’t that common for authors (as evidenced by many of the books I have read), but if you are going to write about something you don’t personally know a lot about, for god’s sake, just run the specifics by someone who does. And if you don’t have friends who know about a variety of things, maybe make a few more friends? More on that later. 

 

Third, the plot in this book is less about the space plot, and a lot more about the emotional dynamics of relationships. So, if you wanted a space thriller, this isn’t it. 

 

Finally, Reid doesn’t write literary fiction. This is genre-fiction stuff, even if it doesn’t fit neatly into a genre, if that makes sense. It’s light, it’s not that deep, and it is meant to read quickly and easily. Keep your expectations in line, and you will likely enjoy it more. 

 

The basic gist of the story is this: Joan is the stand-in for Sally Ride in most ways. But there is also an element of her in Vanessa, who (spoiler) eventually becomes Joan’s partner. 

 

The two of them meet in NASA’s astronaut program, and both get to go into space, although on different missions. 

 

Also going on is a certain amount of drama between other astronauts, some of whom marry and have kids. And yes, drama. Expect it. 

 

But the main subplot involves Joan and her dysfunctional family. Her parents are kind functional, I guess, but they managed to raise Joan’s older sister Barbara, who is a real dick. Pretty, undisciplined, and irresponsible, she gets pregnant young and unmarried, and ends up pushing a lot of the childrearing off onto Joan, the responsible kid. 

 

Thus, a lot of the story involves Joan and her relationship with her little niece, Frances. Which isn’t a bad thing - there are actually some interesting ideas explored in that plot, which feels a lot more realistic than the rest of it, in my opinion. Perhaps Reid has some personal knowledge there? 

 

That’s probably enough without giving more spoilers. 

 

Reid in my opinion imagines how Ride’s life would have gone had she felt free to express her nature while at NASA. In real life, Ride married a male fellow astronaut, who didn’t know about her prior relationships with women. He apparently was blindsided when they divorced. Such is what people had to do back in the day to survive. 

 

Now, let’s talk about the problems of researching a story. 

 

By definition, this book contains a lot of nerdy stuff. For example, astronomy, which Reid (who apparently grew up in a city where stars weren’t particularly visible) admits in the author’s note knew little about. She could find the Big Dipper and that was about it. 

 

So, she learned a lot, and her hard work shows. I actually loved the parts about astronomy, because not only did she get the details right, she explained them in ways that should send people outside to stare at the sky. 

 

On a personal note, some of the things Reid mentions in the book just happened to match the tour of the June sky I gave to some of our book club members on a summer backpack trip - for some, it was the first time they had actually seen the Milky Way, the Summer Triangle, and a number of other constellations. There is nothing quite like staring at the sky at 9,000 feet. It never gets old for me. 

 

The other area of nerdiness, though, was more hit and miss. 

 

I might have mentioned this previously on this blog, but my dad was an air traffic controller and an amateur pilot. So I grew up around aviation. Our family was also pretty into the space shuttles and other NASA projects. A family friend worked at JPL for a while, and he took us kids to watch Discovery land at Edwards Air Force Base on the first mission after Challenger blew up. My own kids have seen Endeavor at the California Science Center, and a bunch of other stuff at air and space museums from San Diego to Seattle. 

 

So I know my stuff here fairly well, and my kids and nephew have followed in the family tradition of being air and space nerds. 

 

So, believe, me, I cared about the details in this book. 

 

So many of them were good, too! The T-38s used for training. The KC-135 as the “vomit comet” of the era. (Now, a 727 owned by a private company and contracted out to NASA serves.) Even the details of training for spacewalks and other stuff is well done. It’s simplified, of course, but it is fine. 

 

Unfortunately, there is one scene which is so totally ludicrous that what I really want to do is go back in time and re-write that part for Reid. My version would fulfil all of the story-related things that Reid wanted to do, but in a totally realistic way. 

 

The scene in question is very much secondary to the plot. It serves solely as a device to develop the relationship between Joan and Vanessa. 

 

In the book, Vanessa, who was a commercial pilot and mechanic (not uncommon) before joining NASA, decides to take a flight with Joan, where Joan gets to point out all the astronomy stuff. So, Vanessa borrows a Hawker 400 from a friend, and they take a quick flight from Houston to Glacier National Park to look at stars. 

 

And yes, at this point, all the people who know anything about aviation are banging their heads on their desks. 

 

Sigh. Let me break this down a bit. The first thing that Reid clearly doesn’t understand is how pilot licenses and type ratings work. 

 

We can probably infer that Vanessa has more than the usual recreational licenses, such as an IFR and multi-engine rating, and has progressed to a commercial license, allowing her to fly passengers for pay. So far, so good. But those ratings only allow you to fly certain kinds of aircraft. Smaller ones just need a bit of work with an instructor on type, not a full FAA certification. So Vanessa could probably have borrowed a friend’s single engine or light twin aircraft, provided she had her training and competency on type.

 

Other aircraft, though - the bigger and more complicated ones - require at “type rating,” which means quite a few hours in a simulator, multiple check rides, and a sign-off from the FAA. And also regular recurrent training and testing. It is no easy task to maintain a type rating unless you are flying that aircraft for your job. All commercial aircraft, whether airline or corporate, have type ratings. While there is no legal restriction on how many type ratings a pilot can have, practical considerations mean that airline pilots typically have only one at a time, and few corporate pilots hold more than one or two. It’s just too much time and expense to keep multiple ratings up at a time. 

 

Furthermore, while small aircraft usually can be flown by a single pilot, there are very few jets even now that can legally fly single pilot. 

 

In 1984, that list was……the Citation II, in a particular variant. That’s the list. The Hawker 400, a bigger jet, is not on it. 

 

[Side note: the crash a few years ago that killed the leader of the “Godworthy” religious anorexia cult was of one of these jets, with only a single pilot. Just because you can fly one single doesn’t mean you should. In this case, a relatively inexperienced pilot lost situational awareness. Not good.] 

 

So, flying an aircraft that required two pilots? One that Vanessa probably wasn’t qualified to fly unless she was flying it for pay before joining NASA and kept her type rating despite the grueling NASA work hours? Anything else?

 

Oh yeah, flying a Hawker costs about $4000.00 an hour. 

 

So that little trip from Texas to Glacier, which would take 4-5 hours of flight time each way minimum, and require one fuel stop each way, would have cost a nifty fifty grand. I doubt Vanessa had that kind of money, even if she did have a rich fuck friend who would let her borrow the Hawker for the weekend. 

 

Soooooo…..let me fix that for you, Taylor. 

 

Let’s start with a better destination. You don’t have to leave Texas. Big Bend National Park may be a 9 hour drive from Houston, but less by air. You would still have to drive about 50 miles from the airport to the park, but same thing with Glacier. You want that dark sky anyway, not runway or city lights. 

 

Instead of a fancy-ass corporate jet, let’s instead go with something a lot more fun to fly for a jet jockey like Vanessa. There are two excellent choices, depending on what kind of rich fuck her friend is. If he or she is a doctor, he would have a Beechcraft Bonanza. (And probably eventually gets killed in it, because that’s how it goes.) If he prefers fun to luxury, he has a Mooney, which would be my choice. 

 

Either of these could go Houston to Big Bend without refueling, either would show off Vanessa’s flying skills - you actually notice airmanship more in a small aircraft - I’ve been up in a number of them and I know. Both make a whole lot more sense for a couple of women out on a little trip for fun. Relatively affordable, still fairly fast, and able to get you to your preferred destination. 

 

See? I just fixed it for you, Taylor. Next time you write about airplanes, hit me up. 

 

So, that covers my main point of irritation. 

 

Let’s talk about some things I really liked. There is a conversation between Joan and Vanessa about God in the middle of the book that is very thoughtful. 

 

Joan, like me, comes from a kind of Fundie family, with at least one parent who believes in a 6000 year old universe. As Joan notes, since we know objectively that it is more like 13 billion years old, and the earth 4.5 billion, you can’t square the doctrine with reality. But that isn’t the only way to think about the Divine. Joan doesn’t see religion and science as necessarily at odds.

 

“But why not? Why, when they tell you that God created man out of thin air and then you learn about evolution, why does the whole thing not crumble for you?”

“Because there are so many ways to define God and there’s still so much unknown about the universe. I could never say that science has obliterated the possibility of God. Certainly I don’t see that happening in my lifetime. And I think that something would be lost if it did. Or maybe I should say that I hope that if it did happen, it would only be because something even more incredible was discovered.” 

 

There is more to how Joan believes and feels, and I tend to agree. The quest for scientific knowledge and understanding - the exploration of the nature of the universe - and the pursuit of God are really one and the same. 

 

Fundamentalists aren’t actually looking for God. They are looking for the power to force their cultural and political beliefs about humans on everyone else. A literal Adam and Eve aren’t necessary for a belief in the Divine. In fact, arguably a majority of Christians throughout history have understood the creation myth as a metaphor, a way of understanding deeper truth. 

 

But a literal Adam and Eve are necessary for the Fundamentalist/Evangelical belief about the subordination of women. THAT is the actual point. 

 

It makes no difference to my own quest for God and understanding of the universe whether the universe is 6000 years old, or 13 billion years old. Just like it matters not to me whether there was a literal tree and a literal talking snake (there wasn’t, and nobody actually believes that man fucked a frog.) Because my quest for the Divine is rooted in curiosity and wonder, not a need to subordinate women and people of color. 

 

Joan goes on to describe a way of seeing the universe as inseparable from the Divine (which is actually more of a biblical concept than most of us were taught), and that as parts of the universe, we partake in the Divine ourselves. (Again, more in line with Christ’s teaching that God and the Kingdom are already with us, if we just choose to see it.) 

 

This underlying belief system leads Joan to a similar place as that described by Isaac Asimov, in one of the best things he ever wrote, the short story The Last Answer. 

 

“You’re saying you don’t believe in a God who would hate, right? And if that God does exist, you’ll remain defiant.”

“Yes, that’s…yes.” 

 

And that is yes for me too. 

 

Later in the book, Joan also expresses one of the things that haunts me about my fellow humans. 

 

“Happiness is so hard to come by. I don’t understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.”

 

You see this in everything coming from the right wing right now. They are furious at the happiness other people - the ones they hate and find unworthy - have found. LGBTQ people finding love, peace, acceptance? Can’t have that. Brown-skinned immigrants finding safety and a better life? Nope. Minorities and women finding good careers? Unacceptable. 

 

Even in the case of my birth family, my mother seems to continue to resent my wife for finding a happiness that has eluded my mom. I just don’t get it. 

 

I mentioned that I liked the subplot involving Frances. I actually have a friend who ended up adopting her nephew under somewhat similar circumstances. Professionally, I know plenty of people who have chosen single parenthood that way: by adopting or at least taking in a niece or nephew who needs care. I greatly admire these people, and am happy that these children are able to be where they are actually wanted and loved. 

 

There is a line from Vanessa to Joan that I think is perfect. 

 

“At the end of the day, Frances is not my kid. She’s my niece.”

“Yes, but also, who cares what word you use? Some aunts are completely irrelevant, and some aunts have been there since the day their niece was born. I had one grandmother I never saw and one who, when she died, I cried for three days. The word isn’t what matters. It’s the specific relationship. She knows that. And that’s what matters.” 

 

In our current shitty political and religious situation, so many of us have had to build “found families” for ourselves and others. Our own genetic relatives in many cases are not safe, not kind, not decent, not loving or accepting. At some point, you have to reject the hate, and find your tribe.

 

The word isn’t what matters. The DNA isn’t what matters. It’s the relationship. It’s the love. And many of us are coming to know that more and more over time. 

 

As I noted, don’t expect these ideas to be explored too deeply. It isn’t that kind of a book. But it isn’t pure fluff either. 

 

The best part about books like this is the interesting discussion we have at our club meetings about the books. Everyone brings a unique perspective, and the book always seems more compelling once you hear what everyone liked or hated.