Synopsis:

A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate.

Booker winner, Shortlisted for The Climate Fiction Prize

Genre: Literary Fiction
Publisher: Vintage
Pub Date: 1 January 2023

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Review:

This book has been on my tbr ever since it won the Booker Prize, and now that I have read I honestly am not entirely sure what to make of it.
In Orbital, we are on a space station with six astronauts as they orbit the Earth. The story is told through one day of sixteen orbits – sixteen sunrises and sunsets through which the characters observe. That is really all there is to this one. It has no pot whatsoever – the point of it is to show the humanity of the astronauts, and of the earth.

I have been enjoying more literary novels of late, but there was something about this one that didn’t quite click for me. I finally picked it up because of the @cfp, and I wonder if reading it through a climate lens has skewered my reaction to it. I do understand why it was nominated. There is plenty of meditation on the planet we all call home, and surely, appreciating something means we will be more inclined to protect it. However, compared with the rest of the shortlist, it didn’t impact me anywhere near as much as they did.

The writing is very beautiful. It’s almost dreamlike and definitely meditative. Even reading about the mundane tasks the astronauts were doing felt like watching a dance viewed through a soft lens. I enjoyed the different ways the characters saw and thought about the earth. There is definitely much the think about after reading, especially with regard to how one might view our very existence on the planet.
I just… didn’t feel anything at all while I was reading, and this book is definitely one that is supposed to make you feel something. Awe, wonder, contemplation, curiosity… anything! I just felt meh, in all honesty.

So… all that to say I don’t know what I think about this little book! I have a feeling that I might get something different out of it if I let it sit on my shelf for a while and come back to it without the climate lens.