Emily Austin’s debut novel, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, perfectly balances humour with the weight of existential dread – juxtaposing the two elements and blending them together seamlessly. Fans of Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times and Ewa Ramsey’s The Morbids will also find this novel addictive to the point where you will want to read it in one sitting, and then obsess over it for the next month.
Emily Austin (Photo by Bridget Forberg).
Gilda, a twenty-something year old woman plagued with anxiety that is fuelled by constant thoughts of death, walks a tightrope, doing everything she can to stay above the ground. After answering a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic Church, Gilda, too distressed to correct the kindly priest Father Jeff, haphazardly accepts a job offer.
As the Church’s new receptionist, Gilda adds to her tower of anxiety in the same manner she adds to the used plates and cups on the brink of collapse in her apartment: inadvertently piling them on, knowing the end result will be catastrophic. Not only is Gilda not Catholic, she is also queer, parts of her life that she conceals from Father Jeff and the parish. Gilda is not the only one keeping secrets, as she soon discovers the suspicious circumstances surrounding her predecessor Grace’s death, and uncovering the truth becomes an obsession.
Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is one of Gilda’s most endearing qualities, along with her animal-loving nature and her extreme empathy for everyone around her. As she continues to stumble into situations that eventually become her undoing, she also makes astute observations on the state of the world, how small we are in the scope of the universe, and the inevitable certainty of death that looms overhead. Her anxiety often leads to trips to the ER, where she fails to receive the care she requires, and instead the focus always centres around the physical ailments that resulted from her constant depressive state.
Overwhelmed, she awkwardly juggles a relationship with the sweet and trusting Eleanor, whilst also experiencing conflicting feelings of alienation from her family and her friends. Nostalgic recollections of her childhood and the misfortunes she endured, such as finding her beloved pet rabbit Flop dead in his cage, validate her morbid view of the world.
Gilda is an unforgettable character and voice who challenges the trivial aspects of millennial existence, whilst also showing compassion for the human condition in all forms and pursuits, no matter how vain and materialistic people have become. Despite being anxious in many regards for her own wellbeing, her main concern throughout the entirety of the story is the people around her. She is overly empathetic and courteous of other people’s feelings and the frailty of the human condition as a whole. Misunderstood by the world and her family, Gilda continues to have compassion for those around her which leads her to go to extreme lengths to protect other people’s feelings – sometimes to the point of appearing deranged.
So how do you deal with the knowledge that you and all those you love will someday die, and that someday you and everyone you know will die, we just don’t know when. Do you laugh or do you cry?
—Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin (Allen & Unwin) is out now.
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead
Meet Gilda. She cannot stop thinking about death.
Desperate for relief from her anxious mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local church and finds herself abruptly hired to replace the deceased receptionist Grace. It's not the most obvious job - she's queer and an atheist for starters - and so in between trying to learn mass, hiding her new maybe-girlfriend and conducting an amateur investigation into Grace's death, Gilda must avoid revealing the truth of her mortifying existence...
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