Orbital
Ratings28
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings28
Average rating3.9
A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in 24 hours
"Ravishingly beautiful." — Joshua Ferris, New York Times
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate.
Profound and contemplative, Orbital is a moving elegy to our environment and planet.
Reviews with the most likes.
Looking through a lens at people looking at our planet through a lens. Who needs a plot?
This was fantastic in parts and very slow in others. Literally no plot. Just musings.
In Orbital, Samantha Harvey explores the vast unknown, while remaining tethered to the kaleidoscope of human experience. Set in the near future, the novel follows a group of astronauts orbiting Earth as they reflect on life, love, and the ephemeral nature of humanity. The narrative seamlessly moves between the personal, the cosmic, and the terrestrial, exploring the fluidity of identity in ever-changing contexts.
Harvey's lyrical prose enhances the meditative quality of the setting, and it's here where Orbital both shines and stumbles. The themes of loss, time, and the search for meaning are deep, but the circular narrative sometimes feels more exhausting than insightful. For a short book, there's a lot of filler posing as profundity.
While the novel's ambition is to explore the vastness of space and self, I found the lack of narrative momentum made it hard to invest deeply in the characters. Orbital is beautiful, but frustratingly elusive - bright and shiny like a star, and just as distant.
Orbital is more than a book; it is a meditation. The plot is unimportant; what’s remarkable about this novel is just how moving it is as it explains the mundanity of the extraordinary. You would think that living in a space station orbiting the earth would be astounding—and it is, at moments in this story—but the real narrative driver here is the interiority of those astronauts, their every-orbit lives that are filled with science and domesticity and so much room to think and reflect. And because of this, the novel forces us to reflect along with them, to grapple with the enormity of our own lives while embracing the everyday mundane. Quite simply one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.
