Book Review – Orbital
Author: Samantha Harvey
Publisher: Grove Press
Year: 2023
This is a quiet book about astronauts on the International Space Station. That’s all it is. Six people in orbit watching Earth turn beneath them. Their thoughts. Their conversations. The routines of life in space.
It won the Booker Prize. People were confused. Where’s the plot? Where’s the drama? Where’s the conflict?
I loved it.
Samantha Harvey is doing something different here. Orbital isn’t interested in narrative tension. There’s no disaster. No systems failing. No interpersonal drama. Just. Existence. The strangeness and beauty of existing in space. Looking down at a planet you came from and seeing it whole.
The prose is. I mean. It’s gorgeous. Harvey writes about Earth from space in ways that made me see it differently. The thin atmosphere. The lights of cities. The weather systems moving across oceans. She finds language for the sublime without becoming purple or overwrought.
The characters are sketched rather than developed. We get fragments of their lives. A memory from childhood. A relationship left behind. A fear they don’t talk about. It’s impressionistic. You’re not supposed to know these people deeply — you’re supposed to sense them.
Is this a novel? I don’t know. Genre feels irrelevant. It’s. An experience. A meditation. A prayer maybe if you’re inclined toward that kind of language. Something you read slowly and let wash over you.
I understand why some people hate it. Nothing happens. That’s true. If you need plot, if you need things to HAPPEN in a book, this isn’t for you. No judgment. Different readers want different things.
But if you’re open to something quieter. Something that’s more about observation than action. Something that uses fiction to achieve what poetry aims at. This might be the most beautiful book I read this year.
It’s short. Under 200 pages. You could read it in an afternoon. Probably shouldn’t though. Let it breathe. Read a chapter and then sit with it. Look out your window. Think about how far away space is. Think about how fragile everything looks from orbit.
Orbital isn’t really about astronauts. It’s about perspective. About what happens when you step far enough back to see the whole.
My rating: ★★★★☆