Winner of The Booker Prize 2024

Life on our planet as you’ve never seen it before

Book blurb

Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth. They are there to 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?

My thoughts

Six human beings, five astronauts, one cosmonaut – the Narrator, Roman (Russian), Anton, Chie, Pietro, Nell.

One day is 16 sunrises, 16 sunsets; 16 days, 16 nights on Earth is one new day.

I have never felt the pull of space travel, never felt that the cost of sending people into space whether to the moon or to orbit Earth was worth it. What are the benefits? What does it matter how we react to weightlessness? Or how small animals behave or react to living in space? There are surely better things to spend money on?

This book gets, for me, as close as anything to demonstrating the fascination with space. The descriptions of living in a spacecraft orbiting Earth are simply breathtaking. The ability the author has to describe the (possible) thoughts and feelings of an astronaut so sparingly that tell of the loss of a parent, of the feelings of euphoria and of the powerful pull of space whilst still having the desire, the need to return to Earth, to home, to family is amazing.

I was fascinated by the little everyday things that are life in space such as swallowing toothpaste, exercising to prevent muscle decay, sleeping upside down and more.

I found the descriptions of space, space travel and Earth just stunning. I was moved to tears by what one of the astronauts experienced when news from home came and there was nothing they could do.

I don’t know what drew me to Orbital and it hasn’t made me change my mind about the cost, not that it needs to this is a work of fiction not a treatise on space exploration, just yet but it has opened my mind to the possibility that, as with any scientific exploration, there might be some benefits.

It is beautifully written, you are there in the spacecraft living as an astronaut, seeing what they see, feeling what they feel, experiencing their journey. It is easy to see why the Booker Prize selectors chose this book as its winner.

I can say with certainty that I have really enjoyed reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey and would definitely recommend it.

Book: Purchased

NovNov24

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Information

Published: Penguin Book Imprint: Vintage | 27/06/2024 | ISBN: 9781529922936 | £9.99 | 136 pp

Buy: Penguin | Hive | Amazon | Waterstones | Bookshop.org (affiliate link) | Your local bookshop | Your local library

Further reading: The Planetary Society |

Author: Samantha Harvey grew up in Kent near Maidstone and spent her teenage years living in York, Sheffield and Japan. After studying philosophy at the University of York and the University of Sheffield, she went on to complete a master’s degree and a PhD in creative writing at Bath Spa University, where she now works as a Reader in Creative Writing. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta and on BBC Radio 4, and she has written reviews, essays and articles for the New Yorker, the Guardian, TIME, and the New York Times, among other publications.

Samantha Harvey is the author of five novels, The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief ,The Western Wind and Orbital. She is also the author of a memoir, The Shapeless Unease.

Her novels have been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian First Book Award, the Walter Scott Prize and the James Tait Black Prize, and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Baileys Prize, the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize and the HWA Gold Crown Award. The Western Wind won the 2019 Staunch Book Prize, and The Wilderness was the winner of the AMI Literature Award and the Betty Trask Prize.

Orbital, was published in November 2023 by Jonathan Cape (UK) and Grove Atlantic (US). It was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction 2024. It is the winner of The InWords Literary Award 2024, the 2024 Hawthornden Prize for Literature and the 2024 Booker Prize. 

She lives in Bath, UK, and is a Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

Website | BBC Radio 4: A Good Read

Books

Novels: The Wilderness | All Is Song | Dear Thief  | The Western Wind and Orbital.

Memoir: The Shapeless Unease.

Essays/articles