Orbital - Samantha Harvey

Published by Vintage/Penguin Random House UK: Dublin, 2024 (2023).

This most recent Booker prize winner is also one of (if not the) shortest Booker prize winner in history. It also is one of the cleanest Booker prize winners I've ever read, and also holds the distinction of being the first Booker prize winning book I have read without owning a copy in advance - a sign that my original Bookerworm goal is weakening somewhat, after so many books that have turned my stomach.

Anyway, Orbital is a short book about a day in the life of six astronauts/cosmonauts living on the International Space Station. They orbit the world 16 times over the course of a day, reminiscing about life, facing personal highs and lows, observing a massive typhoon heading for the Philippines, thinking about a concurrent mission to the moon and whether that will make their role obsolete...

...and then they go to bed, and sleep, and the final chapters (each chapter covers either half an orbit or the whole orbit) take place with all of our protagonists asleep...

...and then the book ends.

It's quite a well-written book, and with so little actual plot, author Samantha Harvey paints numerous pictures of the world as seen through the space station window, as well as reflecting (but never too deeply) on human nature through the various perspectives and focuses of the various astronauts. 

I quite liked this book for what it was. On the sliding scale of Booker prize winners, it is probably near the top just because of the way in which I didn't have a horrible taste in my mouth after reading it. It is almost poetic, and definitely very minimal in terms of plot.

One side-effect of such a minimal focus is that I found myself observing each little thing that happened. So, when Harvey writes: "The six of them barely register the gentle push backward as the spacecraft alters its course to avoid something, some space debris no doubt, the brief force of the thrusters lulling them slowly aft" (page 98) I found myself convinced that something would go wrong, that there would be a frantic race for survival, or something dramatic. But no. That's not the purpose of this book.

Life on the space station is.

Surprisingly decent.

Completed 27 July 2025.



(Bookerworm)

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