Catherine Raynes: Atmosphere and Vianne

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid  

In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond; mission specialists John Griffin and Lydia Danes; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe. 

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant. 

 

  

Vianne by Joanne Harris  

On the evening of July 4th, a young woman scatters her mother’s ashes in New York and follows the call of the changing winds to the French coastal city of Marseille. 

For the first time in her life, Vianne feels in control of her future. Charming her way into a job as a waitress, she tries to fit in, make friends, and come to terms with her pregnancy, knowing that by the time her child is born, the turning wind will have changed once again. 

As she discovers the joy of cooking for the very first time, making local recipes her own with the addition of bittersweet chocolate spices, she learns that this humble magic has the power to unlock secrets. 

And yet her gift comes at a price. And Vianne has a secret of her own; a secret that threatens everything… 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at B.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Twenty to twelve. It is this time every Saturday morning
that our book reviewer Katherine Rain comes and give us
gives us her two top picks for the week, and
she's here this morning, calder Catherine warning Jack, Well, let's
begin with Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Read.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
So, this is the type of the book where you
start almost at the end and you work your way
back from that point from the past. And so you
had to begin in the late seventies and early eighties,
and you meet this woman, Joan Goodwin, who's an astronomy
professor at Rice University, and she has this lifelong fascination
with the stars, and she ends up applying for NASA's
Space Shuttle program as they begin accepting woman candidates, and

(00:51):
so through her eyes you see the training and the
interaction with the fellow candidates, Sam Houston, and she sees
this divide very early on between the nerds really and
the soldiers and those with their military backgrounds, particularly the pilots.
And you learn a lot about mission control and the
mechanics of spaceflight. And while the author gives a lot
of attention to those technical aspects of space, it's the

(01:12):
human stories that unfold alongside it, and their professional ambitions
alongside their personal struggles. And you see Joan's journey from
this very reserved academic to this passionate astronaut and hits
her relationship with her niece, in particular Francis, that is
really touching and wonderful. And then there's this dynamic where
Joan forges some unlikely friendships and this very unexpected romance

(01:37):
with a fellow astronaut candidate, Vanessa Ford, and that challenges
everything she thought she knew about her play, herself, in
her place in the universe, and that portrayal of NASA
and the eighties feels really authentic and well researched, and
you know, she addresses discrimination and the challenges faced by
women in the space program and celebrates their achievements as well.
And the book's incredibly well thought out and constructed, and

(01:59):
you dip into the past and the present and you
see that will through Joan and Vanessa's eyes, and it's
really captivating, really human focused, and really attached to the
story and the characters and about that humanity and relationship
and emotions and it felt really real. It's really well timed.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
So it's a novel, I mean this is yes, absolutely right.
So it's a novel that's kind of set against the
backdrop of the of the Space Program in the eighties. Yeah,
sounds intriguing, Okay, cool. So that's Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins
reader tailor Jinks readers like New York Times number one
best seller three times over or whatever. So you're not
surprised to hear that it's so well constructed, but that
does sound really good. Next up, finally, a sequel to

(02:39):
chochol Art, tell Us About v arm by Joanne Harris.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
So, twenty five years ago, believe it or not, Joane
Harris introduced the world of Avian and her magical skills
at creating chokola, at creating chocolate and weaving herself into
the lives of others by trying to break harmony into
their lives and her book Chocolate And now, twenty five
years later week she had a prequel, So this is
her life before chokoal Art, and it's really magical and

(03:04):
moving and about love and trade and friendship. So you
meet her as Sylvany when she's only twenty and pregnant
and finds herself in the city out of Marseilles after
scattering her mother's ashes in the Hudson Bay in New York,
and she starts working in the small cafe, and she's
taught to cook the recipes from Lewis's late wife's cookbook,
and there's a real enchantment about it, and she starts

(03:26):
to put together the pieces of his life, and she
meet some locals in the cafe, Guys Came. There's two
people called Guy and Mahama who make chocolate, and they
teach her their skills, and that's where she really finds
her love for cooking and reinvents herself as Vivian, and
that wonders of chocolate and its magic really mesmerizes her.
But she's really fearful of her mother's reluctance of settling

(03:49):
down in one place, and so she takes off without warning,
leaving her friends quite distraught. And there's a real mystical
element running through the book. There's tarot cards and rituals
and her ability to see and read people's colors and
understand them so queer clearly. But the writing feels really
kind of authentic and mesmerizing, and you almost feel like
you're in Marseille in the summer breeze, and you can

(04:10):
smell the pretzels and the beer in New York and
the fresh herbs and garlic cooking and shast. The recipes are,
you know, like if you're kind of a bit of
a food fanatic. This is also because you feel immersed
in that world. And it's a perfect book for escapism.
And it's a brilliant prequel to the whole Chocolar story.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Ah sounds so good, fantastic. That is VR by Joanne Harris.
Catherine's first book is Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins. Read and
of course both of those will be on the website.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to Newstalks ed B from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio