Book Review
Only the Astronauts
by Ceridwen Dovey
What do we owe the objects we send into space? This might seem like a strange question to ask, but after reading the five heartfelt stories of Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Astronauts, it’s a question at the forefront of my mind. From the colossal International Space Station to the comical hundred-strong host of Original Space Tampons, the things we choose to become space-travellers alongside us reflect upon humanity and, for Dovey, have their own stories to tell.
In ‘Requiem’ the ISS, on the eve of its fiery decommissioning, fondly reminisces about the many astronauts who called it home, carrying the reader through a flurry of anecdotes, both trivial and poignant, that build a picture of lives truly lived among the stars. Similarly pensive is ‘The Fallen Astronaut’, a story which fuses Neil Armstrong’s spirit with the titular sculpture to produce a meditation on the moon and our history with it.
Yet where Only the Astronauts is most powerful is in the stories where Dovey almost dares you to care, reckoning with the absurd until she finds something beautiful. Nowhere is this more apparent than in ‘We The Tamponauts’ – yes, that neologism is short for tampon astronauts – which begins as an almost laughably didactic feminist parable, before steadily drawing you into a genuinely thrilling and resonant tale of ambition and sacrifice. Likewise, in ‘Starman’, a thwarted love between Elon Musk and the mannequin he sent into space threatens to fall into satirical flatness but doggedly resists it in favour of an earnestness that cannot help but move you, reflecting the ethos of radical sincerity at the heart of each and every story.
Returning to the question that opened this review, Dovey’s stories suggest that what we owe these object astronauts is a voice, however metaphorical, with which to observe humanity and allow us to love and understand ourselves better.
