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Everyone in this room will someday be dead : a novel
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2021
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Library Journal Review
DEBUT Gilda is depressed, and panic attacks send her to the local ER so often that she is on a first-name basis with the janitor. When she loses her job for failing to show up, her lack of money becomes a problem. A flyer offering mental health support takes her to a Catholic church, where she is mistaken for an applicant for the position of church secretary. The previous secretary, Grace, has died recently and might have been murdered. Gilda takes the job and, while catching up on the church's email, finds messages from Grace's friend Rosemary. She can't bring herself to tell Rosemary that Grace is dead, so she begins sending emails impersonating Grace. Then she decides to investigate Grace's death and ends up stalking the parish priest and an elderly parishioner--strange behavior that makes her a person of interest in the police investigation and lands her in jail. In the end, though, Gilda is exonerated and is able to resurrect her life. VERDICT Austin uses seasons in the church calendar to identify stages in Gilda's journey, moving from Advent to Easter as she captures the essence of Gilda's angst and redemption. Along the way, her characters are hilarious, relatable, exasperating, and endearing. For all readers of fiction.--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Publishers Weekly Review
Runaway humor sustains an otherwise grim story in Austin's exuberant debut. After a car accident in which 27-year-old Gilda breaks her arm, she visits an emergency room where she's a frequent patient, then responds to an ad offering free mental health support at a church. There, a priest mistakes her for a job applicant, and she doesn't correct him. After the interview, Gilda accidentally becomes a receptionist, taking over for the late Grace Moppet, who may have been the victim of a homicidal nurse. As the receptionist, Gilda rapidly falls prey to impostor syndrome, a problem she faced during her last job as a bookseller ("I didn't really get 1984 and... I hate poetry"). Meanwhile, Gilda, an atheist and a lesbian, makes awkward attempts to masquerade as a good Catholic, mistaking communion wafers for crackers, trying to understand hymns, catechism, baptism, and the blessed sacrament of confession. The plot thickens as Gilda responds to emails from one of her predecessor's friends as Grace. What starts out as genuinely bleak affair, with a depressed Gilda considering suicide, becomes a brisk story underpinned by a vibrant cast. Fans of Helene Tursten's An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good will find much to enjoy. (July)
Summary
In this "fun, page-turner of a novel" (Sarah Haywood, New York Times bestselling author) that's perfect for fans of Mostly Dead Things and Goodbye, Vitamin , a morbidly anxious young woman stumbles into a job as a receptionist at a Catholic church and soon finds herself obsessed with her predecessor's mysterious death.

Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she's there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace.

In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish tower in her crumbling apartment, Gilda strikes up an email correspondence with Grace's old friend. She can't bear to ignore the kindly old woman who has been trying to reach her friend through the church inbox, but she also can't bring herself to break the bad news. Desperate, she begins impersonating Grace via email. But when the police discover suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace's death, Gilda may have to finally reveal the truth of her mortifying existence.

With a "kindhearted heroine we all need right now" (Courtney Maum, New York Times bestselling author), Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is a crackling and "delightfully weird reminder that we will one day turn to dust and that yes, this is depressing, but it's also what makes life beautiful" (Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl ).
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