I absolutely adored this book, rating it as my one of my Top 10 of 2023. A beautifully realised story set aboard a space station, that perfectly melded an obviously huge amount of research with a compelling narrative. The confined environs that this small cast of characters inhabit really allow us to get to know them - their fears, hopes and ambitions. A superb read.

Incredible prose-led narrative set on the ISS orbiting the Earth. Some of the sentences to describe looking down at the Earth are sublime. It is quite a slow pace though, but worth a read. Great feat of imagination!

The very idea of literary science fiction bugs me, mainly because the whole concept of literary fiction as a genre bugs me. I understand what genre is for, and it is useful just because we need to categorise and classify things in our lives. But categorising by theme (science, futurism etc), is different to categorising by what is seen to be "quality" - literary fiction suggests that it is better than normal fiction. Of course, most people hopefully ignore that now, but that means it has also become secondhand for books that are largely about introspection and modern characters and their concerns. Often without much action. Often overwritten. All of which is to say that Orbital is fundamentally literary fiction via that definition, and science fiction only in as much as it takes place on the orbiting International Space Station.

Harvey drifts in and out of the heads of her international crew of astronauts in the downtime before their next mission (which the book obliquely suggests may be world-saving but never quite gets into the reasons why. Instead introspection rules, potted biographies of this diverse bunch, their loves, their fears and - whoop - we are in someone else's head. It's nicely written but beyond a few moments of nicely played human connection, thoroughly inconsequential and what it thinks is a feature turns out to be a bug. You can write psychologically complex fiction about a bunch of people in space, but I also want to know why they are up there and what happens next, and without that no-one actually seems all that complex.

This great little novel transports us out to space, where a team of six astronauts observe the world below. Asking big questions about humanity and the fragility of our lives, this is a short but essential read.

An exceptionally beautiful tiny book containing both a day in the life of six astronauts, sixteen orbits of the whole earth and the entire history of the universe. A magical gem of a novel.

A shortish novel with people in an orbiting station musing on the world and their lives. It is well-written, interesting in structure and in 'flow' of the narrative. Unfortunately that's about as far as I can go. The lives (and orbit/planet) amble along in an interesting enough way but just not engaging enough thoughout the book to be able to recommend.

Description:
A day in the life of six astronauts on a space station orbiting the earth.

Liked:
Vastly and unashamedly descriptive. Goes all in on describing each of the 16 orbits completed by the station in a 24-hour period. A definite love letter to the planet, great at putting you in the viewpoint of the astronauts and getting you to feel protective about our huge, beautiful, strong, fragile earth. It's also a short and sweet reflection on grief, although this is hardly foregrounded and probably the better for it.

Disliked:
I'm certain this is deliberate, but I'm not sure how I feel about the relative importance of the typhoon within the story. On the one hand, I get it. On the other, it feels kind of unsatisfying and perhaps irreverent. On the whole, I think it probably works.

Would recommend: it’s a quick and interesting trip off-world.

'Orbital' is a stunning, mesmerising novel which follows a day in the lives of six astronauts on the International Space Station orbiting the earth.

Divided into sixteen orbits, we observe the repeated passing of continents and oceans and days and nights below as a typhoon gathers and rages across the Philippines while another expedition to the moon passes them in space. At the same time, we follow the mundane (but fascinating) domestic details of life aboard the space station and the relationships and inner lives of its six inhabitants.

I am in awe of Samantha Harvey's exquisite prose and the way that she manages to write about so much, both great and small, in such a slender novel. There are so many beautiful passages I could quote; I particularly loved her reflection that "Our lives here are inexpressibly trivial and momentous at once [...] Both repetitive and unprecedented. We matter greatly and not at all." And her description of how "the planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything, the forests, the poles, the reservoirs, the glaciers, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the coastlines, the skies, a planet contoured and landscaped by want." And her observation that "We exist now in a fleeting bloom of life and knowing, one finger-snap of frantic being, and this is it. This summery burst of life is more bomb than bud. These fecund times are moving fast."

Although often philosophical and less driven by a traditional plot, this an intensely readable novel which pulls you into its orbit - by Orbit 15 I could almost feel the drift of the continents below me. It is one of the most interesting and powerful novels I have read this year - thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

I am not at all sure what to make of this short book - on the positive side I loved splitting it in to short chapters to mark each orbit and in general a lot of the facts/science were accurate BUT as a huge space fan there were just too many little things that felt 'off' with my knowledge of life on ISS and this kept me from immersing myself in the story fully.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey is a well-researched and thought-provoking novel about a group of astronauts travelling though space.

In The Guardian Harvey says: “ I thought of it as space pastoral – a kind of nature writing about the beauty of space, with a slightly nostalgic sense of what’s disappearing.”

I found it interesting and admirable, but also a bit vague and fragmentary and I couldn’t really connect. I liked the parts where the characters had a more central role, and as the novel progresses, there’s more room for their thoughts and feelings. I guess I’m more of a people person than a space person, and in the end I thought it was well done but not really for me.

Thank you Jonathan Cape and Netgalley for the ARC.

"Orbital" is beautiful. The characters are, just simply, humans. The writing paints slow and heavy strokes onto your heart, with new colours and shapes. Despite that, or maybe because of it, I found myself becoming more and more sad with every page, and I think that is what has prompted my 5 stars rather than 4 - unexpected "feels".

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

This was an ode to life in space, a slow burn image of a day in the international space station as an astronaut, and a love letter to the stars and our planet Earth. With an exquisite prose by Harvey, this short novel will be with me for a while!

This was an extraordinary slow, peaceful ‘scuba dive’ into the effects on long term space travel & our love affair with the physical Earth. I was waiting for something to happen, something plot twisty but it didn’t. And that was fine because the reward is in the exquisite language & detailed observations of our world from a distance. I’ve never read anything like it & I’m a sci fi geek. Huge accomplishment. Brava. 5 stars. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for the ACR.

4.5 stars

Samantha Harvey is a queen of prose. Her writing flows so beautifully that it is a revelation with each new work. Here we follow 6 astronauts as they contemplates Earth, and their lives on it, from the ISS. They exercise, they run experiments, they photograph the devastating typhoon unfolding in the seas below. The juxtaposition between the cosmic and mundane highlights the fragility of life on the planet and in the universe. The humans removed from the rest of humanity find the space to contemplate their impact on the planet compared to the relative mote of dust that humanity represents in the totality of the universe. It is moving on a micro and a macro scale pondering human conflict and destruction alongside kindness, love and friendship. As Harvey guides us through the 16 sunrises and sunsets that the astronauts witness over the course of their own 24-hour "day" she creates a profound and exquisite meditation on the best and worst of our species and the place of our little earth within the wide cosmos.

Once again Samantha Harvey has produced a very different, original novel - one of those ideas so good you wonder why no one has had it before (or maybe they have, but I'm not aware of it). 'Orbital' is set on the International Space Station at some point in the near future, where a group of six astronauts from a range of countries orbit the earth 16 times a day. Theirs is a strange existence - both mundane and extraordinary - and Harvey manages to get across a strong sense of what it might feel like to live that way. Who knows if it's accurate or not - apart from a very select few who've been there. She's clearly done a lot of research and the little details feel like they must be real - so she's either carefully picked them out of her research or is very good at making up authentic sounding minutiae.

The story is set across a single day, although they also reflect back on past incidents in their lives. Harvey is the master of slow fiction. There is nothing that gets the adrenaline pumping in her novels. Instead you get a fearlessly slow, detailed read - although not overlong - that is impressive in its own way. She does provide some tension and structure by featuring two key storylines that develop across the day and involve the crew. One is a super-typhoon they are monitoring and watching helplessly as it engulfs south-east Asia. The other is another space mission - a crew that are making their way to the first moon landing in several decades. There's also a more personal touch with one astronaut dealing with the death of her mother far below on Earth - she is not able to attend the funeral.

If you like slowly paced, thoughtful, immersive fiction then you will absolutely love this. Whilst I do prefer books with more action, even I can appreciate the skill and quality of Harvey's work. It's only the best authors who can enable someone to enjoy novels in a genre that they don't prefer. It's a must read for anyone interested in space - and after reading I do feel a little bit like I've been there myself, and certainly more knowledgeable about it.

Wow! This novella shy of 150 pages was a stunning reminder of what language was made for.
Up in orbit a space station orbits around the Earth every ninety minutes - 16 orbits a day.
During these revolutions, we are observers of the astronauts, much like they are observers of their space station mice. We are treated to wondrous magical descriptions of the surface of the planet as every continent and country slips past in numerous dawns and dusks.
This isn't a science fiction story but elegiac prose celebrating our planet and our place in the infinite realms of space.
Its a reminder of what we have and how vulnerable we are, with the tracking of a major tornado and its devastating effects, the fragility of the space station and the effects on the human body of long term life in space.
Although only a small book, it took me nearly two weeks to read it as I wanted to savour every word.

I’m in awe of how such a simple premise, such a slightness of plot, could coalesce into such a mesmerising, ethereal and tender read. Utterly, utterly beautiful and epic read encapsulated by the slimmest of volumes. Exquisite.

An utterly beautiful novel. Quietly compelling and incredible. That such a vastness of humanity could be contained in such a brief work is breathtaking.