Emily Austin’s INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE follows Enid, a young woman in her twenties who is obsessed with true crime podcasts, has a deep fear of bald men and by day works for the Canadian Space Agency. She’s a serial dater, unwilling to stay in a relationship for longer than necessary, often sending texts in the vein of a form letter to break it off with any new woman she feels becomes too attached to her. Recently, she’s struggled to form relationships with her half-sisters following her father’s untimely passing. At the same time, she’s also caring for her mother as she continues her battle with depression.

All of the aforementioned information gets shoved to the back burner when she suspects someone of entering her apartment and stalking her. Is this a result of too many true crime podcasts or is someone really out to cause Enid harm?

Much like Gilda in EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM WITH SOMEDAY BE DEAD, Emily Austin presents us with a deeply-flawed but unendingly interesting main character in Enid. She’s very much in her own head for the bulk of this novel and it’s hard for the reader to truly understand what is really happening versus what Enid is experiencing. That said, this may not be everyone’s cup of tea as the story doesn’t feel like it has a straight plot and spends a great deal of the book’s page count sort of meandering, which I imagine is a good reflection of what it would be like to live inside Enid’s mind. However, that is what I love about Austin’s style. I see a lot of myself in her characters, despite the fact that I am not a twenty-something neurodivergent lesbian.

This book ran a total of three hundred and twenty pages and not once did I feel like the free-flowing nature of the storytelling became muddled and directionless. I would have gleefully read this if it were twice as long, that’s how much I love being inside the mind of the characters she creates.