Orbital by Samantha Harvey is a sumptuous symphony of images, a glittering, slim volume of spectacularly gorgeous sentences on just about every one of its 144 pages. Six astronauts, four men and two women, orbit 250 miles above the earth in a single, 24-hour day during which they experience sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets. Two of the men are Russian cosmonauts assigned to the toilet marked “Russian Cosmonauts Only.” Nell, the English woman, Chie, the Japanese woman, Shaun, the American, and Pietro, the Italian, frequent the toilet labeled “American, European, and Japanese Astronauts Only” while they look out on an earth with no visible borders, “a rolling invisible globe which knows no possibility of separation.” “The Milky Way is a smoking trail of gunpowder shot through a satin sky.”
That there is only a slight plot involving their assigned duties matters little as glimpses of each astronaut contemplating the beauty below them and wondering about the lives they’ve left behind on earth affords a brilliant view of grief, art, faith, kindness, and more than anything: gratitude for the creation they see.
As the astronauts describe their view, we readers take in the images through their eyes: the nightly light shows, a developing typhoon, “a mass of moon glow, peeling backward as they forge toward its edgeless edge,” and every dawn a “blade of light cracks open and the sun explodes from it.”
When I started reading Orbital, I found myself so enamored with the poetic images I yearned to hear them spoken aloud. We were experiencing a week of below zero temperatures so I listened as my six new acquaintances circumnavigated this planet while I walked my treadmill and found myself glancing at the sky outside my window with a new appreciation. When the novel concluded, I picked up my iPad and read many of the sentences I’d recently heard with increasing awareness. That this won the 2024 Booker Prize wasn’t surprising.
“The earth is the answer to every question. The earth is the face of an exulted lover; they watch it sleep and wake and become lost in its habits. The earth is a mother waiting for her children to return, full of stories and rapture and longing. Their bones a little less dense, their limbs a little thinner. Eyes filled with sights that are difficult to tell.”
As Orbital wends toward its conclusion, the astronauts remind us: “That the ride of your life will pass in an eyeblink, just as life does to the aging brain whose slowing makes everything appear to move faster.” Thank you, Samantha Harvey.
Summing it Up: Read Orbital to immerse yourself in one of the most beautiful books you’ll ever experience. Listen to it if you can. (It’s available in audio from many libraries via Hoopla.) If you buy the physical book, you’re sure to highlight numerous sentences in this contemplative wonder.
Rating: 5 Stars
Publication Date: December 6, 2023
Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Gourmet, Road Food, Super Nutrition, Sweet Bean Paste, Tapas, Book Club
Author Website: https://www.samanthaharvey.co.uk/
Reading Group Guide: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/reading-guide-orbital-by-samantha-harvey
What Others Are Saying:
Chicago Review of Books: https://chireviewofbooks.com/2023/12/05/around-the-world-in-90-minutes-samantha-harveys-orbital/
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/16/orbital-by-samantha-harvey-review-the-astronauts-view
Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/samantha-harvey/orbital/
The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/books/review/orbital-samantha-harvey.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/25/orbital-samantha-harvey-book-review
Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780802161543
The Sunday Times (U.K.): https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/orbital-by-samantha-harvey-review-everyday-life-in-a-space-lab-50mqk0wbw
“One of the most beautiful and poignant novels I have read this year. It seems wholly necessary that a novel about the fragility and glory of our mutual and natural habitat, the Earth, is not even set on it.” — The Scotsman
