Orbital, Samantha Harvey’s Booker winning novella, is set on the International Space Station (ISS). Having orbited Earth since 1998, ISS doesn’t get much media attention anymore, except when something goes wrong. The space station has been constantly inhabited by international crews from 2000, with an astronaut typically spending around 6 months at the station.

1. Reflection, Perspective, Perception

How can one describe Orbital? It isn’t plot driven, there is no action whatsoever. However, it isn’t character-driven either. We learn just enough about the six people inhabiting the space station to understand the background for their reflections.

I guess reflection is a keyword. Being in space, isolated from everyone, orbiting Earth is a ground-breaking experience; the result of mankind’s finest scientific achievements, taking human beings to new heights. The experience is groundbreaking in more sense than one. The ground (i.e. gravity) has been taken away and nothing is the way we are used to. Surely, this environment will inevitably cause us to reflect on ourselves, our relations to those at home, humanity and our place in the bigger universe.

In contrast, this exceptional experience also involves going round in endless circles (or ellipses), which is also the case for the reflections of the astronauts.

Perspective is another keyword. The concept is introduced via a discussion of Diego Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas. Who is the subject of the painting, who is the observer? Another example is the photo of Earth taken by an astronaut. Is he the outsider, because he is the only human being not in the photo? Or is he the most real human in the photo, because his existence can be inferred, whereas nobody else is visible? Throughout the novella, perspective is a reoccurring theme.

A final keyword worth mentioning is perception. We perceive things differently, when we are in space compared to back on earth. In space, we may see the (in)significance of the human species in a different light. Two people have similar observations, but perceive them differently. When observing the magnificent Earth from orbit, one astronaut thinks, how can you see something like this and believe in God, whereas the other thinks, how can you not believe in God?

2. The Reading Experience and Virginia Woolf

Orbital gave me strong associations to Virginia Woolf. And it wasn’t just because of the introspective musings taking place over a day as seen in Mrs Dalloway. Neither was it because of the group of six characters, each representing different sides of humanity or maybe even the same person, similar to The Waves. No, it was the actual reading experience, which reminded me strongly of reading Woolf.

As I have mentioned before, I always struggle to get into Woolf’s novels. Sometimes, I need to read them more than once, most often I have several false starts, before I manage to finish. But if I persist and concentrate, sooner or later I will be transported to different state of mind, where I am living and breathing every word. Very few authors besides from Virginia Woolf can do that. But to my surprise, Orbital produced a similar effect. The parallel to Woolf also helps to explain, why Orbital won the Booker price. Like Woolf’s novels, it can most likely be read again and again with new aspects being discovered every time. And Booker judges have to read the novels quite a few times.

Towards the end, Samantha Harvey includes a beautiful paragraph, which describes my transcendent experience of reading Orbital, much more eloquently than I’ll ever be able to do.

“There is nothing else and never was. When land comes again you think, oh yes, as if you’ve just woken up from a captivating dream. And when ocean comes again you think, oh yes, as if you’ve woken up from a dream in a dream, until you’re so dream-packed that you can find no way out and don’t think to try. You’re just floating and spinning and flying a hundred miles deep inside a dream.“

3. Final Thoughts

I loved the beautiful writing, the stream-of-consciousness style and the fact that every single sentence made me reflect, think and feel. In many ways, this book is the ode to humanity with all our flaws and limitations, which Brian Cox’ Human Universe aspired to be. But whereas Human Universe failed miserably, Orbital hit home.

The scientific accuracy wasn’t bad either. When fiction authors attempt to write about science, it often turns out rather cringy. Not here. The author did a good job and her descriptions were aligned with what I’ve read and heard about life at ISS.

Before writing this review, I googled Samantha Harvey. It turns out, she has mentioned Woolf as one of her inspirations. The critic Gaby Wood has even called her “this generation’s Virginia Woolf”. I for one agree with the comparison to Woolf, who happens to be one of my favourite writers. Praise doesn’t get much higher than that.

Title: Orbital [2023] 
Author: Samantha Harvey 
Format: Audiobook, narrated by Sarah Naudi
Genre: Fiction