Samantha Harvey (1) (1975–)

In Orbital, Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize-winning novel, we spend a single day aboard the International Space Station, where six astronauts from Japan, the United States, Britain, Italy, and Russia circle the Earth sixteen times. The book resists developing a traditional plot in favor of a more meditative structure in which each chapter corresponds to some or all of a 90-minute orbit, immersing the reader in the astronauts’ routines, their occasional interactions, and the profound show more solitude that comes with being in space. As they perform their duties, news from Earth—a parent’s death, a typhoon threatening friends and loved ones—seeps into their insulated world, prompting reflections on mortality, love, and the fragility of the planet below. Through glimpses into their backstories—memories of a mother’s survival in Nagasaki, regrets over a loveless marriage, longing for a distant spouse—the astronauts’ inner lives surface and disappear, much like the shifting view of Earth through their portholes.

I would love nothing more than to say that I found this brief novel to be thoroughly captivating, but, sadly, that was simply not the case. Certainly, the author's prose is wholly exquisite: lyrical in its depictions of the planet that remains the bond connecting the men and women on the space station and heartfelt in its consideration of their innermost thoughts. The problem for me was that nothing much really happens in the book to hold the reader’s interest and move the story along, unless you count periodic observations of a developing storm cell in the South Pacific from 250 miles above the Earth to be a compelling plotline. Indeed, there are only so many ways that one can express the awe and majesty of looking down at the home planet before that whole trope starts to wear thin. This is a novel that will very likely appeal to readers whose taste in literary fiction leans to atmosphere and reflection over action, but those readers who prefer the books they read to tell an engaging story should probably look elsewhere. show less

When I heard that the 2024 Booker Prize winner was a novel set aboard the International Space Station, I knew I had to read it. I thought the science fiction genre had finally been accepted as serious literature. Now that I've read it I would say it is not so much science fiction as science philosophy but that's still quite a departure for the Booker Prize jury.

There are six people living aboard the International Space Station, four men and two women. Two of the men are Russian, one man is show more from Italy, one from the US, one woman is British and the other is Japanese. The book is set during one day while the astronauts wake up, do exercises, conduct experiments, clean the station, share a dinner and watch a movie and then fall asleep. The station makes 16 orbits of the earth with each one covering a slightly different path around the planet. During this day, another group of astronauts are on their way to the moon where they will make the first moon landing since 1972. The people aboard the ISS follow the flight closely. Most wish they had been chosen for that mission. Nevertheless, they are all entranced by being above the Earth. They spend a lot of free time looking out the windows at the planet. One of the major sights this day is a typhoon developing in the Pacific which is heading for the Philippine archipelago. Two of them have spent time in the Philippines and worry about the people they met there. The novel ends with some of those people taking refuge in a church, praying for deliverance from the storm.

Even though this group of people are from different countries, they realize during their time on the ISS that there are no borders visible from space. Harvey's writing is particularly beautiful in describing their observations of our planet.
"...the senses begin to broaden and deepen and it's the daytime earth they come to love. It's the humanless simplicity of land and sea. The way the planet seems to breathe, an animal unto itself. It's the planet's indifferent turning in indifferent space and the perfection of the sphere which transcends all language. It's the black hole of the Pacific becoming a field of gold or French Polynesia dotted below, the islands like cell samples, the atolls opal lozenges; then the spindle of Central america which drops away beneath them now to bring to view the Bahamas and Florida and the arc of smoking volcanoes on the Caribbean Plate. It's Uzbekistan in an expanse of ochre and brown, the snowy mountainous beauty of Kyrgyzstan. The clean and brilliant Indian Ocean of blues untold. The apricot desert of Takla Makan traced about with the faint confluencing and parting lines of creek beds. It's the diagonal beating path of the galaxy, an invitation in the shunning void." (pp.106-107) show less

The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping by Samantha Harvey is an extended meditation about the anxieties of life in general that become amplified when she goes through a year of sleeplessness.

If you're seeing comments about "stream of consciousness" writing and don't really like that style, don't let those comments keep you from the book. This isn't truly stream of consciousness. Most of her writing is not internal thoughts unfiltered but rather her thoughts written to convey her show more feelings to a reader. This means that each small section does have form and the jumps due to associations is less off-putting than in actual stream of consciousness. Harvey does try to convey the way the mind can sabotage attempts at sleep but for the most part stops short of taking us into her unfiltered stream of consciousness.

Having clarified that misstatement from so many reviewers (one that makes a certain amount of sense, if a reader views any glimpse at internal thoughts outside of a definitive narrative as "stream of consciousness" then they will think that is what this is), I have to acknowledge that there isn't much obvious structure to the book. That, however, is a strength and not a weakness. There is a sense of a chronological flow, whether from the beginning of her sleepless year or through a sleepless night, but each meditation is also a relatively independent piece of writing. I say relatively because there are threads other than sleeplessness that run through the book.

Life is stressful and whether in the form of fear, anxiety, or a hybrid of the two that stress can amplify any other physical issue. I have always been a "bad sleeper," prone to waking and then maybe getting back to sleep eventually. In the past few years I have had bouts of sleeplessness, usually no longer than a week to three weeks. I know how much that disrupts my life and how every little, and not so little, element of life becomes something to fret over while I try to empty my mind to sleep. I can't imagine a year of that.

But the things that Harvey writes about will speak to not only other insomniacs but anyone who ever takes the time to ponder life's incongruities. Things that make little to no sense and even more perplexing those things that make perfect sense but are simply wrong or bad. I have my always ready topics that wait just below the surface, ready to expand into every corner of my mind if I have a bad sleep, or sleepless, night. I think most of us do. This book is relatable for those who know this about themselves.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less

I could say that this is a novel about six astronauts/cosmonauts on the International Space Station, orbiting for 24 hours as sixteen sunrises and sunsets pass on the Earth below them, but that description is so inadequate as to feel like a lie. Better, perhaps, to say that it's an extended prose poem, and a 200-page exercise in perspective as we look down at Earth, out towards space, and into ourselves, contemplating and celebrating all the profundity, mundanity, fragility, beauty, and hope show more of space travel, of humanity, of life, and of our home world.

It's gorgeously written, philosophical, meaningful, affecting, and, since Samantha Harvey clearly cares deeply about getting the details right, it also feels true.

As someone who cries at documentaries about the Apollo program and can become positively verklempt thinking about Carl Sagan's description of Earth's "pale blue dot," it feels astonishingly as if this were written with the sole purpose of being the perfect book for me personally. I don't know quite what I did to deserve that, but I am deeply grateful for it. show less