Orbital
Samantha Harvey
A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space—not towards the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. 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. more
207 pages, Hardcover
First published Atlantic Monthly Press
3.76
Rating
1364
Ratings
358
Reviews
Samantha Harvey
14 books 236 followers
Samantha Harvey has completed postgraduate courses in philosophy and in Creative Writing. In addition to writing, she has traveled extensively and taught in Japan and has lived in Ireland and New Zealand. She recently co-founded an environmental charity and lives in Bath, England.Her first novel, The Wilderness, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009, longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize and won the 2009 Betty Trask Prize.
Community reviews
What a puzzle of a book this was for me. If it had been exactly the same book and labeled "creative non-fiction" I would have been bowled-over-amazed by it. Its lack of plot would have been no impediment--because life doesn't come with a plot. To have been aware, as I read, that I was reading the meditations and wonderings of a real person in space would have been captivating. But it's fiction. more
This book features in my Best Books of 2023 BookTube video on Hello, Bookworm. "Sometimes they look at the earth and could be tempted to roll back all they know to be true, and to believe instead that it sits, this planet, at the centre of everything. "Small but mighty. A stunning meditation on our wondrous planet earth. This book gives account of just one day in the lives of six astronauts who are orbiting the earth. more
Orbital is a slender literary meditation on a crew of astronauts orbiting the earth. The very fact that it is not science fiction is itself miraculous and implausible. Humanity is in space. That we are in space is not a story about space—it is a story about Earth. The writing is gorgeous. more
I was moved and changed by reading "Orbital. " Samantha Harvey has gifted us with an amazingly articulated deep dive into space, the universe, and our place in it. It was an awe inspiring word picture that I could see as clearly as a NASA video. There were astronauts and families and people who are loved but, for me, their stories were usurped by the brilliance of space. Orbital changed my outlook, making everything feel simultaneously grander and smaller at the same time. more
Wow. This novella shy of 150 pages was a stunning reminder of what language was made for. Up in orbit a space station tracks around the Earth every ninety minutes - 16 orbits a day. During these revolutions, we are observers of the astronauts, much like they are observers of their space station mice. We are treated to wondrous magical descriptions of the surface of the planet as every continent and country slips past in numerous dawns and dusks. more
Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for an advanced reader copy. I'm always on the lookout for works that blur the lines between literary and science fiction. Orbital is the first literary work I've found that is focused on today's space program, the international space station is real and the crew, fictional. I thought it was a fascinating blend of science and philosophy. What I found most fascinating is that even though the astronauts are in space, much of their field of view is of the earth and not the rest of the galaxy. more
“Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft contemplating the world below. ” That blurb really says it all. This book was not for me. I kept going only because it was short. Unfortunately, it was also completely plotless and uneventful. more
Wow. Orbital isn't really like anything I've read, and I don't think I'll stop thinking about this book, maybe. ever. This tiny book (novel somehow doesn't feel like the right word) gives us a glimpse into one day in the lives of six astronauts from five different countries as they live together, circling their collective planet. A meditation perhaps is the right word for this book. more
I think fiction can pretty much do anything, but I have to admit that I've very rarely, if at all, read a fictional text that has truly conveyed a sense of wonder. So kudos to Samantha Harvey for Orbital, a novella that follows a single day in the lives of six astronauts living on a space station that orbits the earth every ninety minutes. There's an inevitable cyclical repetition in this book that recalls Harvey's otherwise very different The Western Wind, which played with the rhythms of fifteenth-century time, and it's to Harvey's credit that when she casts her eye out over the globe over and over again, it feels vital, not repetitive: 'Ocean now, the South Pacific off the shores of Ecuador and Peru where Quito and Lima herald the land. There are a thousand miles of lighting zapping the coast, and a two-thousand mile trail of nimbus cloud that sits of the sea, and a four-thousand-mile rampart of mountain. And in the densest dark where there are no cities, there's a thousand-mile patchwork of orange dots where the rainforest burns. more
Format: audiobook ~ Narrator: Sarah NaudiContent: 3. 5 stars ~ Narration: 5 starsComplete audiobook reviewI’m not sure what to write about Orbital. It’s a short literary fiction novel centered around people living on a space station orbiting the Earth. Six astronauts and cosmonauts (two women and four men) from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds are aboard the space station. They are from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan. more
4/5 starsAlthough marketed as a novel, Orbital reads more like an extended essay: a sort of existential musing on life, our planet, space-travel and our humbling smallness in the scope of things. When approached as such, it’s an incredibly successful work. It’s eloquent, stunningly worded and insightful, and manages the “largeness” of its themes without outstaying its welcome. It’s the sign of a brilliant author who understands their craft ánd subjectmatter, to be able to condense so much down into an under-200-page novella. Had Orbital been marketed as a literary essay, or piece of non-fiction writing, this would’ve been the end of my review: 5/5 stars, succeeded in everything it set out to do. more
A quiet, majestic and emotionally charged book to end/begin the year on. This is a stunning, meditative, intelligent look at human life and the universe, from the point of view of six astronauts/cosmonauts, as they orbit the earth over 24 hours. It shows both the awe of life, and also its ultimate pointlessness. Everything matters, even though we all know, deep down, that nothing does, really; it is all theatre, distractions we construct as we await death and nothingness. And that is beautiful in its own way. more
I fear this didn't really work for me. It is a personal thing: fiction that tries to instill awe in the reader usually does not have that effect on me. In Orbital, the idea is to evoke the beauty of our tiny and vulnerable planet and the lives lived on it by observing and contemplating it from space. For me a good nature documentary has a much stronger impact. If there had been a plot it could have been more interesting and impactful (In Ascension by Martin McGinnes for instance does that). more
Books like this make it clearer to me that I'm just a cold stone wrapped in human skin. more
This was very beautiful, original, profound, a love letter to planet Earth and a meditation on humanity. And also really difficult to get through. Epiphany after epiphany. And I didn't want to be an asshole, right. Eyes glazing with "awe fatigue". more
Thanks so much to the publisher for providing an advanced reader copy for me to review. Firstly, this book contains the exact recipe for a book that I would love. To Be Taught If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers, Providence by Max Barry, The Freeze Frame Revolution and Blindsight by Peter Watts. if it involves a few people on a spaceship together with no space and no choice but to become deeply invested in each other's lives, I'm very likely going to love it. Orbital by Samantha Harvey was no exception. more
In The Guardian Harvey says: “ I thought of it as space pastoral – a kind of nature writing about the beauty of space, with a slightly nostalgic sense of what’s disappearing. ”I found it interesting and admirable, but also a bit vague and fragmentary and I couldn’t really connect. I liked the parts where the characters had a more central role, and as the novel progresses, there’s more room for their thoughts and feelings. I guess I’m more of a people person than a space person, and in the end I thought it was well done but not really for me. Thank you Jonathan Cape and Netgalley for the ARC. more
A meditative little book. A love song for our pretty planet and, to a lesser extent, a discourse on human nature. Not all of Harvey's thoughts hit the mark, but there's plenty to chew on and I thought the writing was quite good. There's no plot to speak of, which I am totally good with. A quick read that most people will enjoy. more
28% dnfWritten in a dreamy, floaty style I guess I was supposed to get some deep philosophical insights from orbiting the earth in a space station but I’m afraid it didn’t do much for me. more
This thoughtful novel, in which six astronauts circle the Earth, leans more heavily toward existential musings and visually descriptive prose than plot, and I think that some readers will find this quite rewarding. The writing felt lyrical, almost fluid. At times I felt swept up in this style, like I was bobbing peacefully, almost meditatively, along on a sea of words. Eventually, though, my attention started to drift. I actually think it would have been interesting and immersive to have had a globe nearby during the visual descriptions of the planet. more
Maybe it was the narrator (I listened to it) or just the aimlessness of it, but this one wasn't for me. I feel like if you are in the mood to read lovely words strung together prettily for no other reason than to enjoy language, this is a good one. And I don't mean that in a sardonic way- I think there is space for those sorts of reads, I just wasn't in it when I read it. . more
I had to go back and re-read a lot of this book because the prose was so dense and repetitive that I felt like I kept missing things. It’s a third-person point of view that switches perspective so often that it was easy to get lost. There were some beautifully written parts but I spent most of it frustrated and uninterested. The structure was interesting because the plot and prose itself both felt very circular and meditative. There were highs and lows — long sentences and very short ones, a lack of an intensive plot, and a strong centre — that made it feel like a looping, slow roller coaster you can’t escape. more
A simple premise: six astronauts and cosmonauts, living and working on the International Space Station. This slim novel captures one day in their unusual lives, as they hurtle through space at 17,000 miles an hour. This might be one of the biggest surprise reads of the year for me. A fascinating meditation on our planet. A moving elegy of our place in the world and the universe. more
Orbital, by British writer Samantha Harvey, is a beautiful, thought-provoking love letter to our planet. It will probably be my book of the year for 2023. Sometimes you need to leave a country, or a situation, to write about it, because the distance offers a broader perspective or new insights that you can’t see when you are too close. It’s that idea that Harvey has exploited here. She celebrates the beauty and fragility of our planet from the perspective of outer space. more
Beautiful writing. I found this a very healing read. more
I loved the way space was made everyday. I loved the small plot movements. I loved the language. This would be a great bedtime book and for me was almost a little book of meditations on what it means to be an inhabitant of earth. A great slow read, probably not a great speed read. more
A luminous but more or less plotless novel that gently unreels like a meditation on many things that touch on the human—love, death, grief, man’s ever-questing nature—the global and the cosmic. Six astronauts and cosmonauts in an international space station are in orbit above earth, and we follow them over the course of a single day as they circle the planet 16 times and move through their routines of completing tasks, research, eating sleeping, communicating with those at home, etc. The voice shifts from authorial omniscience into the minds of the individuals and back out again. One has just received news that her mother has died and that she will miss the funeral, plunging her into memories of childhood and of her mother’s own infancy as a survivor of Nagasaki. Another worries about the Filipino fisherman and his family that he and his wife befriended on their honeymoon as the track the path of the massive super-typhoon that is bearing down on the archipelago. more
This started out rather well, the audiobook was easy to listen to, the writing flowed and was really beautiful. On top of that there were some insightful and insiring thoughts and contemplations sprinkled in. And still it got boring after a while and didn't work as a good book for me. There isn't much happening in terms of plot. It's mostly observations by and about astronauts orbiting earth. more
ARC audiobook provided in exchange for an honest review. The narrator on this book did a wonderful job. The descriptions and the way she handled them really made me feel like I was right there in space with the characters. That being said, the whole book kind of felt like a glorified description of earth from space. I appreciated all of the details but the main idea of the story sometimes got lost for me in the view from space. more