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A review by yak_attak
Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin
4.5
I have anxiety. Particularly about driving. I'm honestly pretty *good* at it, that's the thing, I know that's something that everyone says/thinks, but I think I genuinely am somewhat better than your average joe at driving. I enjoy it. It's freeing, it's fun, I get to listen to my tunes....I also spend just about the entire time doing it in a constant state of anxiety thinking up the next insane possibility as to how the entire interstate is going to spontaneously crash and we'll all die, and what I need to do to even have a *remote* chance of survival. If I have to drive first thing in the morning, I'll undoubtedly be up late thinking about how driving is an absolutely horrifyingly dangerous method of transportation, that we could do anything and it'd probably be better, and how there's no way I'll make it if I go.
Then I get up in the morning and go and am fine.
Reading this book is like forcing yourself into that mental state. The protagonist Gilda has anxiety and depression to such an obscene degree that she's become a shell, a response robot who will say or do anything to just have an interaction end safely, without having made things awkward, or really even notable. There's a ridiculous level this goes to, leading to some pretty goofy situations, but the core concept here is so painfully relatable, you have to be self aware of it in yourself to really I think have fun with this book.
And oh is this book fun. The best aspect is how dang fucking funny this book is. It never (but for one or two sting quotes at the end of sections) really sets itself up to be comedic, but its total blackness, and its embracing of the absurdity of it, just hits so well on every page. Gilda digs herself a new hole, ever deeper, ever more entrenched in the most inane lies. It's constantly delightful, if again, always reflecting back at you.
All that said, this is a textbook example of a book that I will have enjoyed immensely reading and basically forget tomorrow - minus the relatability of existential dread, it kinda ends up on a big old nothing in the last few pages. Honestly, if Austin had gone for the darker ending, stopping the book like 20 pages earlier I might have been fully on board. As it is, it's still great - very much readable, and very much "makes you feel seen" to anyone with anxiety.
Then I get up in the morning and go and am fine.
Reading this book is like forcing yourself into that mental state. The protagonist Gilda has anxiety and depression to such an obscene degree that she's become a shell, a response robot who will say or do anything to just have an interaction end safely, without having made things awkward, or really even notable. There's a ridiculous level this goes to, leading to some pretty goofy situations, but the core concept here is so painfully relatable, you have to be self aware of it in yourself to really I think have fun with this book.
And oh is this book fun. The best aspect is how dang fucking funny this book is. It never (but for one or two sting quotes at the end of sections) really sets itself up to be comedic, but its total blackness, and its embracing of the absurdity of it, just hits so well on every page. Gilda digs herself a new hole, ever deeper, ever more entrenched in the most inane lies. It's constantly delightful, if again, always reflecting back at you.
All that said, this is a textbook example of a book that I will have enjoyed immensely reading and basically forget tomorrow - minus the relatability of existential dread, it kinda ends up on a big old nothing in the last few pages. Honestly, if Austin had gone for the darker ending, stopping the book like 20 pages earlier I might have been fully on board. As it is, it's still great - very much readable, and very much "makes you feel seen" to anyone with anxiety.