LoveReading Says
Profound and poetic, stark and stirring, Samantha Harvey’s Orbital sees six astronauts ponder the world and the meaning of everything as they embark on a nine-month scientific mission of “weightless drifting…nine months of this sardine living, nine months of this earth-ward gaping”.
The earth seen from the astronauts’ perspective is a magnificent, powerful entity. A place of “auroras, hurricanes, storms”. Their strange, remarkable situation sees them experience a “day of five continents and of autumn and spring, glaciers and deserts, wildernesses and warzones.” Looking down, they understand why our planet is called Mother Earth, made all the more pertinent when the mother of one of the astronauts dies.
Their distance from earth only makes them feel more connected to it, and to life. What is real, what is imagined? How are we connected to others? In the case of the astronauts, “Rotating about the earth in their spacecraft they are so together and so alone, that even their thoughts, their mythologies, at times convene.”
Profoundly human, and smoothly philosophical, Orbital is a book to savour in one sweet, soulful sitting. It’s a poignant, long-lingering triumph.
Joanne Owen
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Orbital Synopsis
Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft contemplating the world below.
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.
Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.
The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?
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Samantha Harvey Press Reviews
A slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas of swirling weather patterns and rolling continents - Guardian,Autumn Picks of 2023*
One of the most beautiful novels I have read in a very long time -- Mark Haddon, author of The Porpoise I admire Orbital even more than the rest of Harvey's work... I don't think I've read anything else with such love for its characters and such clarity about the state of the planet, and I was deeply grateful for the novel's refusal of despair or cynicism -- Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater
This is such a beautiful book you have to adjust your readerly heart to take it all in... It is an awe-inspiring and humbling love letter to Earth and those who reckon with the gift of it -- Max Porter, author of Shy
Six astronauts on a space station are working, sleeping, and watching the world go by. They think about typhoons, algal blooms, seascapes, cities at night, Velázquez, frog calls, fried eggs, family. Orbital is a lush description of the gorgeous earth, and a broad-minded, level-headed, affectionate take on what goes on down here -- Daisy Hildyard, author of Emergency
A gorgeous song of praise from on high, a hymn sung in starlight to celebrate mankind's courage and endeavour -- Mike McCormack, author of Solar Bones
Orbital is a magnificent, thunderous work and yet so brief, so fleeting. It is an elegy to planet Earth in all its splendour and fragility. Exquisitely well-written, it confirms Samantha Harvey as a singular talent -- Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall
A fascinating glimpse inside a home so few will ever see. Her lyrical prose skillfully contrasts the technicalities of space travel with the ever-present inspiration of the gleaming planet below... This slim novel is so much more than the sum of its parts. Luminous and profound, Orbital is hard to put down and even harder to forget - Booklist
Lovely lyrical prose... This gorgeous meditation leaves readers feeling as if they’re floating in the same “dark unswimmable sea" - Publishers Weekly,STARRED REVIEW*
One of the UK's most exquisite stylists - Guardian
This generation's Virginia Woolf - Telegraph
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