‘Orbital’ by Samantha Harvey is the 2024 Booker Prize winning novel about six astronauts rotating in their spacecraft above the earth. This is a short book so was easy to squeeze in before years end, and looking at Bookstagram, it seemed to split opinion - some found it meandering and overly descriptive, others found it lyrical.

Astronauts

It followers six astronauts on the International Space Station over a 24 period - four men and two women from  Japan, the United States, Britain, Italy, and Russia. A day in the life of an astronaut is slightly different - each chapter of the novel covers a single 90-minute orbit around Earth, with 16 orbits in the 24 hours.

There's a bit about their various duties in the ISS such as lab work and seeing how mice cope with zero gravity, but a lot of the book is taken up with the astronauts musings on life, death and all the stuff inbetween. Climate change is there too, and there's something vulnerable about the planet below. Wars and borders mean nothing up here - the astrounauts rely on each other for survival. One of the more moving segments for me was the Japanese astroutnaut Chi, who learns of her mothers death.  

Slow

When I began, I found it a wee bit slow. But the prose and imagery started to work on me, and I started to enjoy it. Parts of it uplifting, and there were certain passages when the astronauts were looking back at the earth that created a feeling in me, akin to that I sometimes I get during meditation or self enquiry. Putting names on feelings, I suppose  wonderment; a sense of awe.

My favourite passage was when Nell goes on a spacewalk.

‘She looked down. How could she not? The earth was tumbling beneath her at speed. The naked startling earth. From out there it doesn’t have the appearance of a solid thing, its surface is fluid and lustrous. ‘

It was slow, no doubt. There isn't a plot as such, so don't be expecting much in the way of story, as you won't find it. It's more a meditation on our planet, our place in the cosmos. Not looking at the earth through a screen or porthole. 

And you know what? Sometimes I like slow. I enjoy the precise descriptions, the easy pace . Sure, there are a lot of descriptions of parts of the planet floating by, but somehow Samantha Harvey keeps them fresh. Maybe I started to tire near the end, but I thought the book was the perfect length.

Summary

This was a good example of the right book at the right time for me. I’ve only read one other of the booker nominees (‘James’ by Percival Everett'‘) but I felt it was certainly deserving of any accolades that comes its way.

I've become fascinated with the ISS since finishing the book, and it taps into my recent interest in the cosmos.  There's something hypnotic about watching it float below you, this blue and green ball spinning into infinity that we happen to be on, and this book captures some of that wonder.

Amazon US Amazon UK

160 Pages

Published by Vintage 27 June 2024