Orbital

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.

This isn't a book about anything. Nothing happens. There is no adventure and the author forgot to add the content of a story. However, there are endless descriptions of the earth from orbit. Page after page of run-on sentences, no paragraph breaks, and lists of things. Also lots of reflections on what it is to be human, what is humanity, and our role in the cosmos. Tedious stuff but an extra star for being relatively short.

A beautiful, thoughtful analysis of mankind and us individuals that make up the whole.

The book’s construction is fascinating in that pretty much all plot has been removed to give space to this contemplation of the planet and its place in the universe. The use of repetition is also really striking - putting us in the position of the astronauts and their 16 sunrises each day.

I’d have preferred more a storyline I think, but maybe that’s just out of habit…