#17. Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead
the best book title I have seen in a while, tbh.
Wow okay.
I forget exactly where I heard about this book--I do remember that it was on some “New Release” list or another, and the title stuck out to me (because I am a morbid weirdo and think way too much about death/mortality ha ha ha).
I requested it from my library and when I picked it up, I honestly wasn’t that excited to read it because I have been much more of a spooky/scary mood recently. I put it off as long as possible, but as the library due-date creeped steadily closer, I finally decided I had to just read it quick and get it over with so I could return it on time. Luckily, it is a short book (less than 250 pages), so I figured even if I wasn’t that into it, I’d get through it within a day or two.
All this is to say that I was not expecting to absolutely love this book. Blew my (admittedly low) expectations out of the water. I can’t stop thinking about this book.
I will say up front that this book might not be for everyone--but boy howdy, did it find it’s target reader in me.
Okay, so.
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, by Emily Austin
Plot:
This is a book about Gilda, a 27-year-old lesbian atheist who cannot stop thinking about death. She deals with extreme (though undiagnosed) anxiety and depression—so when she finds a flyer offering free therapy at a local Catholic church, she decides to give it a try. When she arrives at the church, Father Jeff greets her and assumes she is there for a job interview—they’re hiring to replace Grace, an administrative assistant for the church who recently passed away.
As it happens, Gilda was recently fired from her job (due to depression-sleeping through several shifts). She needs a new job—and more than that, she’s too embarrassed/anxious to correct Father Jeff—so she ends up taking the job despite knowing she is absolutely the wrong person for it (again, lesbian atheist).
When she’s not pretending to be a good, hetero, Catholic gal to fit in with her new job, Gilda is spending a ton of time in the Emergency Room due to frequent panic attacks that convince her she’s dying, spending time with a girl she met on a dating-app, and absolutely hyperfocusing on death/mortality/the impermanence of things. She’s also spiralling progressively further into a deep anxiety/depressive state.
One day, Gilda opens an email in the Church inbox from Rosemary, a friend of the (now deceased) former administrative assistant, Grace. Gilda can’t bear to be the one to tell Rosemary that Grace has died, so she sends a response back, impersonating Grace. She thinks that this will be a harmless exchange and will spare Rosemary the heartache of grappling with the death of her friend, but when the police begin to suspect that Grace’s death may have been the result of foul-play, Gilda finds herself in way too deep. Hijinks ensue.
Def worth nothing a few trigger warnings for this one: mental illness, depression/anxiety, suicidal ideation, suicide (off page), self harm, homophobia, alcoholism
My thoughts:
There was sooo much that I enjoyed about this book. First of all, I really like books which can be simultaneously hilarious and also a little sad, and I felt like this one struck the right chord for me. The humor is dark, to be sure, but I found myself absolutely cackling at certain points because it was just so dang relatable. As someone who also deals with anxiety and depression, I felt so so seen by the inner monologue of this character.
That is actually another reason why I loved this—I felt like the portrayal of anxiety and depression was so REAL. Obviously mental illness manifests a little differently for everyone, but Gilda’s experience of her mental illness was so so so relatable for me. The obsessing about death, the extreme health anxiety/hypochondria, the going to the ER because a panic attack feels like she’s dying, and especially all of her intrusive anxiety-thoughts. I swear, some of her thoughts are thoughts that I have had (or still have lol) frequently, and there was just something so cathartic for me about sharing that experience with the character.
Also, I feel like so much of this story happened because Gilda was too anxious to get herself out of situations. She literally took a whole job because she freaked out and couldn’t admit to Father Jeff that she wasn’t there for an interview. If that isn’t me, I don’t know what is. Just this week I got stuck doing an interview for a job I have no interest in because I couldn’t figure out how to tell the recruiter that I was not interested! I’m not kidding! My timing in reading this book was impeccable, hahaha.
One other thing that felt (unfortunately) relatable was that Gilda had received multiple referrals for psychiatric help, but was never contacted by a doctor/was never able to make an appointment. I feel like for the neurotypical among us, there’s this sense of “Well why don’t you go to therapy, then?” and it’s like...not that easy, my guys!!! The mental health system in this country is bad!!! This is not even to mention that it is often really cost prohibitive even when/if you can find an appointment (this was not an issue raised in the book, I am just annoyed personally by this ha ha ha anyway, let me stop).
So, yeah. Apart from being extremely relatable due to her absolutely wrecked anxiety brain, I felt like Gilda was also incredibly witty and enjoyable as a character. Even when she is caught up in her own intrusive thoughts, and even when her anxiety is palpable on the page, she is also super smart and funny and empathetic. I just loved her?
Another thing that I really loved about this book was the view of the Catholic church from someone who was raised without religion. There were some absolutely hysterical scenes of Gilda trying to figure out what the heck was happening during mass, for example.
A thing some of you may not know about me is that I was raised Catholic and even went to Catholic school until 5th grade—undoubtedly this experience is nestled in the roots of my psychological issues. I absolutely still have a fear of nuns, don’t @ me.
In my adult life, I’m not religious. You won’t catch me within 100 feet of a church unless it’s for a wedding or something. To be clear, I don’t begrudge people who are religious or who like to attend church (I am even a little jealous of the comfort people can glean from leaning on faith tbh—like, would love to have something that makes me feel one crumb better lmao but anyway!!!) it is just Not My Thing. Even when I was younger and still Part Of It, I distinctly remember having all of these questions about religion (the aforementioned nuns of my past did not like this!!!) and thinking it was super weird to sit through a mass where the whole congregation would just recite a script back to the priest. It was so...eerie?
So, the passages of the book where Gilda finds herself stuck for the first time as part of Catholic rituals really had me in hysterical tears. Like wow girl, I FEEL you.
Finally, I really enjoyed that the death of Grace turned into a bit of a mystery that we see Gilda trying (failing) to solve, and I liked how the whole situation was just an absolutely extreme example of Gilda’s anxiety totally unraveling her life. It was so FUNNY, I cannot get over how funny it was.
All this being said, there were parts of the book that were also really serious and hard to read, especially with regard to Gilda grappling with the realities of her depression/anxiety and suicidal thoughts. I honestly kind of enjoyed how seamlessly the book moved through scenes where I was kinda laughing into scenes where I was feeling so much empathy for Gilda.
Without spoiling, I just have to say that the way the end of the book tied aaaaall of the pieces together was so fucking perfect, I can hardly stand it. I need someone else to read this so I can talk about it! I loved this so much!!
Other things: Not that anyone probably cares one way or the other, but I am trying a ~new thing~ with the newsletter where I only talk about 1-2 books per post. I feel like sometimes these things get wildy long, and as someone who never reads entire long emails (apologies @ my job) I felt like keeping things a little shorter might work better? Anyway, that’s what’s going on here. I’ve been reading loads and loads but just have not felt inspired to sit down and write a whole review of anything recently, until this one--because I loved it SO much.
As we approach Spooky Season (65 DAYS TO HALLOWEEN) I am planning to really get into a lot of spooky books/thrillers/hecking weird content, so look forward to that in the coming weeks.
Thanks as always for caring about my dumb thoughts!
-Amy