Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

A Novel

De: Emily Austin

Narrado por: Emily Tremaine

In this “fun, page-turner of a novel” (Sarah Haywood, New York Times best-selling 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 20-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 best-selling 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).

©2021 Emily Austin. All rights reserved (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Tremaine's pacing and delivery capture Gilda's mounting anxiety as she spirals out of control, becoming increasingly preoccupied with death and disaster as her life crumbles around her. Tremaine's characterizations bring heart to Gilda's well-meaning co-workers, complex family members, and unique friendships." (AudioFile Magazine)

Review

It is very good story about a life perspective. The biggest part in it is the fear. Some parts are so boring even though the narratives go smoothly and fast. Overall, it is good, especially the end. If I know to right better, I would. ✌🏻

Boo hoo Protagonist

Sorry, this is the first bad review for me to have to write. This main character is too whiny for enjoyment.

Unexpectedly Entertaining

I don't remember how I discovered this book. The premise intrigued me. This book is both funny and poignant. I did laugh out loud several times. I admired Gilda's ingenuity in hiding her secrets while feeling sorry that she felt she had to. I hope she has a better life going forward, and I think she will.

Gilda & Eleanor Would be Friends

If you liked “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine”, this should be your next listen. It is a raw, laugh-out-loud story about mental health and feeling like nothing matters while also feeling like everything matters. Cannot recommend enough.

Gilda says the things we all are thinking

This book touches on it all. The extraordinary of the ordinary such as hearing a loved one laugh. Family denial and pretending not to see what is right in front of them. Gilda deals with depression in such a honest and funny way that was delivered perfectly by the narrator. Gilda is a cool character to take a journey with .

Very similar to Eleanor Oliphant

It’s was pretty good overall, I was rooting for the main character and invested in the story.

The Quiet, Shattering Weight of Existing

Reading Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead felt less like consuming a novel and more like being submerged in someone else’s anxiety. Gilda, so consumed by existential dread that she stumbles into a job at a Catholic church despite being a lesbian atheist, moves through the story with quiet, relentless intensity. There are no grand confrontations, only the slow, suffocating pressure of existence, weighing down every moment of inaction.

It reminded me of Fleabag, but if Fleabag were paralyzed by her own mind instead of propelled forward by chaos. Fleabag performs her pain, reaching for connection even as she pushes it away. Gilda folds into herself. Her breakdowns are quiet, internalized. When she reaches a breaking point, it isn’t with a scream but with the slow, deliberate destruction of every dish in her apartment—an act of control over a life she cannot seem to steer.

That moment reminded me of The Wall. In Pink Floyd’s rock opera, the protagonist, Pink, destroys his hotel room in a psychotic break. That act of raw destruction—needing to externalize the chaos inside—felt eerily similar. But while Pink’s breakdown is explosive, Gilda’s is restrained, almost tragic in its quietness. His is operatic, loud, and catastrophic. Hers is the sound of a single, final glass shattering in an empty apartment after a first attempt failed to destroy it.

But what I keep circling back to is the tension between the macro and the micro.

From a macro perspective, nothing matters. Not me, not my family, not my choices. The universe is incomprehensibly vast, and my existence is small and meaningless. Gilda feels this too. She fixates on death, the certainty that one day she will not exist. She observes her body in parts, as structures, as a biological machine. She drowns in the knowledge that everything ends.

But from a micro perspective, everything matters.

Every interaction I have, every word I say, every moment of kindness or cruelty ripples outward, shaping the world in ways I can’t fully understand. The way I treat someone today might shift the way they see themselves. The way they react might affect someone else. Even if none of it matters in the grand scheme of the universe, it matters to the people in my life. And in that small, immediate world, those moments are everything.

This tension isn’t just in our lives—it’s in the fabric of reality.

At a quantum level, particles exist in multiple states until they are observed. The simple act of looking at something changes it. Yet at an atomic level, everything appears stable, predictable. We know this stability is an illusion. That everything is, in reality, in constant flux when examined closely.

So what does that say about us?

Are we the quantum flickers of the universe, shifting states depending on whether or not we are seen? Or are we too small, too insignificant, to even be observed yet? Do our relationships—these tiny, fragile connections—form some fundamental, unseen structure of existence?

Maybe that’s why it hurts when connections break.

Why Fleabag’s final glance at the camera feels like a lifetime of unsaid things. Why Pink’s destruction of his hotel room is so violent, so necessary. Why Gilda smashes her dishes in the quiet solitude of her apartment.

Because on some level, we know these relationships matter. That even if we are nothing in the grand scheme of the universe, we are everything to the people in our orbit. A crushing weight when measured by our hearts, yet a meaningless gram of dust in a vast and empty cosmos.

I don’t think meaning will ever be found in the vastness of space.

More likely, it exists in the tiny, flickering moments of human connection. The ones we create. The ones we lose. The ones we cling to despite everything.

Maybe that’s what Gilda, in all her anxious spiraling, is trying so desperately to hold onto.

And now that I have reflected on all of this, what does it mean?

It’s possible—likely even—that my observation of this book has no effect on the universe. The stars won’t shift. The expansion of the cosmos won’t slow. No celestial body will alter its course because I found it resonant, unsettling, and thought-provoking.

And yet, on a different scale, perhaps my observation does change something.

By reading this book, I have altered my own thoughts, drawn new connections, seen reflections of other works—Fleabag, The Wall, quantum mechanics, and the fragile structure of human relationships.

My perception of it has shaped my understanding of myself, even in the smallest way. By acting on the recommendation to read it, by sharing my thoughts, I have strengthened a bond with someone I love. That change in me, subtle and imperceptible, ripples outward. I share my thoughts. Someone else considers them.

They too have read the book.

And maybe they absorb a fragment of my perspective and carry it into their own world.

My observation, in this way, does something.

It affects the people around me, just as their reactions to my thoughts affect me in return.

It may not matter in the vastness of space.

But it matters in the intricate web of human interaction.

The same web that dictates how we interpret meaning, build relationships, and navigate our lives.

And maybe that’s all it needs to do.

Maybe our effect on the universe isn’t in cosmic shifts or gravitational pulls but in the micro-movements of perception.

In the way we observe.

In the way we share.

In the way we react to the things that move us.

Maybe that’s the answer.

If we are too small to be noticed by the universe, then we are the noticing.

If our existence has no inherent weight, then we are the ones giving it weight.

Through observation.

Through interpretation.

Through each fragile, fleeting moment of connection.

Perhaps my observation of this book doesn’t change the universe.

Perhaps it is the universe.

At least in the only way we are capable of measuring it..

A Little Dark.

Amusing, got sorta morbid a few times.
Not something to cheer you up. Not bad.

Mindfulness Makes for a Boring Read

Really great idea of a story but read thru the mind of a neurotic practicing mindfulness was so redundant! I didn't need to envision her every observation of every situation she found herself in.

Couldn’t stop

I loved listening to this book, it was such an adventure through the main characters head and truly a journey for myself on how we see ourselves and how we must honestly deal with the world. Loved it.