Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

I found Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead to be very thought-provoking. It was not immediately a story I “liked” because experiencing Gilda’s obsession and decompensation was very uncomfortable, but I have not been able to stop thinking about it, now weeks later. In thinking about it all the time I have come to “like” it more.

Gilda’s depression is something I recognize within myself as well, though I am less of a hot mess. She has become sucked into her weird job that she got by accident and it is taking over her life in an unhealthy way. She does not even like this job! Haven’t we all been there? Gilda’s poor mental health leads her to become obsessed with her predecessor at her job as a secretary for a Catholic Church, the recently deceased Grace who possibly had ties to a newly unmasked serial killer, a nurse who gave elderly patients overdoses to “put them out of their misery.”

Gilda’s double life becomes more and more unhinged as she tries to convince her job she is indeed a good, straight, Catholic girl and tries to convince her new girlfriend that she’s not dating that guy a parishioner set her up with who will not stop parroting The Secret.

Unfortunately, Gilda’s worrying behavior and “investigating” lead her further into trouble and it is genuinely distressing to witness. One of the things in her life she is trying to action is for her parents to see that her brother’s alcoholism is becoming more serious. Her brother is their golden child, so they cannot or do not want to hear it. This leads them to make Gilda a scapegoat in the situation and call her crazy, which ironically pushes her further into her mental health crisis, which they latch on to criticize even more.

Her obvious crisis makes her a prime target for the local police who attempt to make her fit the perpetrator for a crime she could not have committed, basically only citing “odd behavior” as evidence. Similar things have happened to me in school (much lower stakes, but lasting scars) and this part of the story gave me a panic response. This book reminded me very much of All’s Well by Mona Awad which I read in 2023 both in the main character and the way it made me feel (distressed!). Recommend them both, but tread carefully.