A Review of Emily Austin’s “Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead”
A Sad and Funny Book
Despite having a release date set for early July 2021, Emily Austin’s Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is not — if that title wasn’t obvious enough for you — a beach read. While it is breezily written and is easy to read, it deals with the serious subject matter of mental illness. Though the novel tackles this subject with somewhat of a light touch, some may find the book to be too depressing. That would be a shame because the volume is a great illustration of what it is like to suffer from crippling anxiety and depression, as told from the point of view of someone who suffers from these diseases. And it is, often enough, quite funny and a bit lighthearted, particularly in the early going. For these reasons, this is a book that should be read by as many people as possible to help combat the stigma against mental illness. It also doesn’t hurt that the author is from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada — which is my current hometown, and I love to be a cheerleader for local writers when it’s merited.
At the outset of the novel, we met Gilda — a 27-year-old animal-loving, atheist lesbian — who has just gotten into a small car accident that has injured her arm. It turns out that when she shows up in the Emergency Room, the nurses and even a janitor all know her, and she has been here many times before with seemingly minor complaints — meaning that they treat her condescendingly, though this aspect is handled with humour. (This shows that many health professionals don’t know how to deal properly with people who are suffering from a mental illness, which is a truth to which this novel speaks.) It turns out that Gilda has lost a job as a bookstore clerk because she hasn’t been showing up for work, but instead quickly falls into another job as an administrative assistant for a Catholic church where she meant to inquire about a therapy group. She gets the position without anything in the way of someone looking at her CV or examining her personal history — she’s hired solely because she’s young and, it is thus assumed, knows a thing or two about computers and the Interwebs. (This part of the book is perhaps a tad unrealistic as the church I go to always runs police background checks on those who get a job there.) However, it turns out that the former receptionist has reccently died under mysterious circumstances and Gilda maintains, as part of her deception of being a devout and straight Catholic, the perception over email that the former secretary is still alive to elderly parishioners who wouldn’t know any better. What’s not helping is that a young male congregant has decided that he’s attracted to Gilda, and although she’s gay and has a girlfriend, she agrees to go out with him, again to maintain appearances. Hilarity and tragedy all ensue.
As you can tell, a lot is going on with Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead to varying degrees of success. Before it takes a serious and dramatic turn towards its end, the book is often slyly funny. You may not laugh out loud at some of the humour, but there are parts where you might crack a small smile, such as when Gilda learns that the password to the church’s computer is simply the word, wait for it, “password.” However, there is a serious side to the book, and that might deter readers who prefer their fiction to be light and airy. Still, this is an important book that should be read by many. It helps to some degree that the “chapters” (for lack of a better word) are short and typically only last a page or two, which helps to keep reading this book moving along. It’s a relatively short book — I read half of it in a sitting — and it flies by, which is an asset. A minor liability is that the novel does jump around a bit in time and space: one minute we might be in the church’s sanctuary, the next minute we could be in a flashback to something that happened with Gilda as a little girl, and the next she’s having an argument with her parents in the story’s current timeline. I can understand the reasoning: the book is written from the perspective of someone with a fragmented mind. However, you must pay attention to the narrative, and it can be easy to let your mind drift, especially because the fragments of the novel are so short.
Still, this is an impressive debut novel from a young author who is bound to burn brightly on the Canadian and possibly international stage. Emily Austin is a talented writer who writes with flair and originality and is a powerful new voice in fiction. I’m sure that this book will go far, particularly as it makes you emphasize with someone who is suffering from a severe mental illness. Again, it does so in sometimes a less serious manner, helping to humanize those suffering from mental illnesses to others. Austin is an emphatic writer, and the book is all the greater for that. I also didn’t mind the takedown of the Catholic Church, though it should be said that Austin doesn’t hit below the belt and say anything too barbaric. She simply examines the superficiality of religion to a degree from the perspective of an atheist, even if it turns out that her main character does receive some form of help from attending a church as part of her job. The criticism and satire are done with an even-keeled hand.
Overall, while Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead can be morbid in both its humour and its drama, it is a fun, entertaining book. This is a novel that people with a mental illness might be able to find a little bit of hope in — even if I did find that the resolution wound up being quick and a little pat — and, despite not being a beach read, is something you might be able to find a ray of sunshine in. This novel is wonderful and, perhaps if I should ever have the time and inclination and am not busy reading other books for review purposes, it might merit a second look. Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead speaks to the obvious truth about mortality but is a book that can be savoured and enjoyed. This is an impressive first novel, even with some of its limitations, and is something to look out for on your favourite bookstore’s shelves.
Emily Austin’s Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead will be published by Atria Books / Simon & Schuster on July 6, 2021.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
