Interesting Facts about Space

Enid is many things: lesbian, serial dater, deaf in one ear, space obsessive, true crime fanatic. When she's not listening to grizzly murder podcasts, she's managing her crippling phobia of bald people and trying hard not to think about her mortifying teenage years - which is hard, when she's lost the password to her old YouTube account and the (many) vlogs that her teen self once uploaded. She's worried about herself, her depressive mother, and what the deal is with gender reveal parties. But as Enid fumbles her way through her first serious relationship and navigates a new family life with her estranged half-sisters, she starts to worry that someone is following her. As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her...

Full of charm, humour and heart, Interesting Facts About Space is a pitch-perfect exploration of the strange ways we try to connect with others, and the power of sharing our secret selves with the people we love.




Genre: Literary Fiction

"Tensely plotted and full of heart, Emily Austin's second novel follows another endearing heroine I'd follow to outer space and beyond." - Anna Dorn

"Interesting Facts about Space is a terrifically beguiling mixture of the comical, the surreal and the moving. Emily Austin, the queen of darkly quirky, endearingly flawed heroines, has created a wonderful character in Enid, a woman who's found her own idiosyncratic way of navigating a world of weird people and events (which may or may not be coloured by her imagination). Emily's writing has a clarity and directness that illuminates the novel from start to finish. Full of wit and wisdom, Interesting Facts about Space is a testament to the power of confronting the messy truth of life, however tempting it is to retreat into the soothing sanctuary of impersonal facts. A joy to read." - Sarah Haywood

"Emily Austin has done it again! I love how her quirky dark humor reveals both the absurdity and relatability of the human condition. Enid is undoubtedly a charmingly eccentric Emily Austin protagonist: her greatest fear is bald men, her love language is sharing interesting facts about space, her coping mechanism is listening to true crime podcasts, and her secret is that she thinks she has a parasite that makes her a bad person. Fellow parasite-host readers will be both entertained and consoled by where the story goes." - Celia Laskey

"Emily Austin is the patron saint of Sad Girls With Too Many Feelings, and masterful at finding and revealing the universal story in an achingly specific situation." - Nora McInerny

"Dark humor has so much to teach us about the beauty and absurdity of the human condition, and the risk this book's charming heroine takes to open her fragile and flawed self to love contains a life lesson for us all." - Courtney Maum

"Wow, just wow. Emily Austin gets better and better! Interesting Facts About Space is a delightful, big-hearted book that made me laugh and think about all the ways in which we convince ourselves we're too weird for this world - and yet it's the most human thing anyone can do. An absolute charmer of a novel!" - Mai Nguyen

"Interesting Facts About Space is among other things, a vibrantly paranoid mystery and an unexpected love story. Emily Austin creates beguilingly eccentric characters, especially true crime addict and outer space encyclopedia Enid, who's both oddly confident and yearning to disappear. Interesting Facts About Space is highly original, engrossing and hauntingly entertaining." - Paul Rudnick