Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, was the 2024 winner. I probably would have read it by the beautiful cover design and intriguing blurb alone, thinking that at less than 140 pages, I would blast through. I would have been terribly wrong.
Although this is a small and short book, it is dense. We get the whole of humanity, its history, its faults and achievements, its purpose and future, sometimes broken down into personal backstories but generally focussed on how it has impacted the rest of the planet and perhaps the universe, in a small-sized package. Sticking to the theme of the novel; if it were just a little bit denser, it would be a black hole.
There isn't much of a plot. We spend one day with the six people living aboard the International Space Station, looping around the Earth in 90 minute intervals. Lots of sunrises, lots of sunsets (these apparently never get old, even when you've seen thousands of them up there). Lots of measurements, research, practical stuff like moving garbage bags around or eating honeycomb. But in the sense of what happens; nothing much.
In a somewhat related sideplot, there is also a group of astronauts on a different mission to visit the Moon on that same day. I am not sure why this was included, as to me it just distracted from the six and their lives and musings. But it is the only thing that really happens, apart from a typhoon on Earth just about to hit the Philippines. Both of these things obviously do not physically impact the ISS, they are just in the mind of its inhabitants.
We get to know some of them. I found Chie's story, the Japanese astronaut whose mother survived the atomic bomb and who died the day before the story took place, the best. There were so many different layers to how she experienced life, both her mother's life, her own life but also life in general, how she managed to cope with her grief in this confined space, that for me could have been the whole of the novel. But there are five other people in the ISS with her and we get some glimpses of them; the Russian astronaut who misses his kids, the British astronaut musing on her Irish farm, the American busy with his faith. The fact that I'm referring to these characters by their nationality is because I've blatantly forgotten their names; that is how much impact they made on me.
And that to me is the second main fault of the book; we do not get to share the six characters' experiences, backstories, feelings etc equally. That to me made it feel a bit lopsided, as if some of the others were token additions but not real people. Which is funny, because the whole novel otherwise felt incredibly real. I read somewhere that astronauts who've been in the ISS were surprised at the level of realistic detail, both on how it looks, on how it is to live there, and on all the practical things. If the setting is so real, why couldn't the characters all be real as well?
Finally, as I said earlier, this novel is not about what happens. It is about taking a step back, reflecting on the human impact on Earth. Which can be durable and sustainable, such as the ISS itself, but also destructive, such as the impact of climate change or the human encroachment on natural habitats. Zooming out to this macro level, also somewhat zooming out to see all of human history, puts a lot of the emotions that the characters feel into perspective. But you need both. And you need the realisation that in the end, we are still at the mercy of other powers, as the typhoon is a constant reminder of. I found these relfections, several of which take place as the astronauts sleep, the most inspiring and thought-provoking parts of the book.
All in all, Orbital was a beautiful read that could have been better if it had better balance and/or focus. But its message, about our progress and our pitfalls, makes it a clear Booker winner.
