Orbital

by Samantha Harvey, Sarah Naudi (Narrator)

Audiobook

English language

Published Nov. 2, 2023 by Penguin Random House.

ISBN:: 978-1-78733-434-2

(4 reviews)

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 …

6 editions

Marek reviewed Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Swept along by gorgeous prose.

4 stars

I picked this up having not seen it before, from the combination of the blurb and the reviews on the cover, promising a beautiful book about astronauts on the International Space Station.

It is precisely that. Delicious, evocative, and poetic prose in a sweeping flow that both captures the disorienting combination of the banal and extraordinary of life in space. Astronauts in (or "on") orbit are inevitably some of the most capable and amazing people alive, but their lives are finely regimented and filled with finicky, highly structured work and lots and lots of housekeeping. The juxtaposition of that caretaking work with the fact they are in space, looking down on the world beneath from a god's-eye view, is central to the narrative here. It is less a story, and more an exploration of the humanity in the extraordinariness of the astronauts, and the extraordinary in the ordinariness of the …

I picked this up having not seen it before, from the combination of the blurb and the reviews on the cover, promising a beautiful book about astronauts on the International Space Station.

Except they are tethered to it, psychologically, and spend huge amounts of their days ensuring the ISS is kept as close to Earth-like as it can be, because that's what makes space at all liveable.

There was some ebb and flow to the reading of this, for me, times when I lost it a little bit, though that was likely to do with me and the way I was reading it as much as anything to do with the writing.

I found this book beautiful, for its humanity, and its invigoration of our relationship to the Earth. It's short, and well worth your time.

CodeByJeff reviewed Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Read for the prose, not the plot

4 stars

Because there isn't one.

But if you enjoy relaxing with poetical language, thinking about our planet and the power and beauty of it, you'll enjoy.

Fionnáin reviewed Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Above the pale blue dot

5 stars

Orbital is a novel that seems to go nowhere except round and round, and yet it grows into a cacophony of story during its brief and deceptive simplicity.

On the surface, it is a well researched, character-driven fiction about four astronauts and two cosmonauts orbiting the earth in a vessel for scientific observation. However, this container becomes a device for Samantha Harvey to collapse progress, poverty, climate change, ambition, grief and hope into a tiny vessel. All too often we are reminded that only a few inches of metal protect [us?] from complete doom, such is the fragility of life. Beautifully written and concise, this book was a terrific surprise.

Marek

rated it

Feb 2