Orbital by Samantha Harvey: book review
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Overview: Six astronaut are living in the International Space Station. The book follows a single day of orbiting the Earth and gives glimpses into the pasts and presents of all of the astronauts from the US, England, Japan, and Russia. As they watch the world go by, they consider the world in a macro fashion. Orbital is the winner of the 2024 Booker Prize. Overall: 3.25
Characters: 3 We don't get to know any of these astronauts very well. Even though we briefly get into the minds of all of the astronauts, they aren't given much depth. Many are forgettable or have interchangeable backgrounds. The only ones that stuck with me were Nell and her fascination with the Challenger explosion and Chei, whose mom dies during the orbit. These are just about the only characteristics they're given. While I understand the limitations of showcasing characters trapped in a confined space for a short period of time, the novel is so short that there was much more real estate to delve deeper into these characters and their histories with getting involved with the space program. Just because the primary setting is the Space Station doesn't mean that the book can't temporally expand beyond it. Despite the thin word count, there is plenty that could have been cut for the sake of more developed characters. Orbital is much like another Booker pick, Headshot, in relation to character development where a single characteristic repeated over and over is left to stand in for creating a fully realized character.
Plot: 3 It's hard when a book is "no plot just vibes" but also really has no character development either. There's a vague sense of tension or a carrying force around the moon expedition that launches during the day we spend at the International Space Station, but the problem with this is that we're in the Space Station, not in the moon rocket, so we just get a lot of "huh, wonder how they're doing." There's also a typhoon that's heading for the Philippines that they track out the window, but again, they aren't involved in this reality. They're just seeing it all unfold at a remove. Instead of diving into who the astronauts are, the pages are filled by noting the repetitive tasks they perform and the various countries that they float over, mostly shared as long lists of country names sprinkled with adjectives. This is a hallmark of every chapter, and the entire book get gratingly repetitive in only a handful of pages. The biggest trouble with the plot is that you could put this book down at any time and leave with the same impression.
Writing: 3 What stood out most in the first few pages of the book is that Harvey loves an adjective and also an adverb, which isn't the most conventional approach to modern literary fiction writing. I found this to be quite interesting. Unfortunately, though, for all the words that go towards a description, there's little that's evoked by her pictures. I mostly felt like I spent the book staring at someone pointing to different places on a map. She did a good job of describing the space station, but this book made me think the awe of witnessing Earth from space is beyond words. I think the greatest problem is that literary fiction tends to be about deeply felt, embodied experiences and reflecting those back to people. And Samantha Harvey hasn't been to space. She does a great job of using google and her imagination, but I think there's only so much of an impression that can be made in the style of lit fic with that limitation. I just wanted Harvey to go all the way there, go deeper.
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