Orbital – Samantha Harvey
The 2024 Booker Prize Winner and you quickly see why. The writing, the use of language is pinpoint in its crystalline observations. Harvey is brilliant at nailing description, particularly, in this case, of planet Earth from the ISS. A wordie like me shivers with appreciation (and jealousy) as she comes up with painterly poetry of various parts of the globe, like this one of Africa: ‘The rich purplish green of the vast Nile Delta. Brown becomes peach becomes plum; Africa beneath them in its abstract batik. The Nile is a spillage of royal-blue ink.’ Each page is studded with linguistic…
Al9 December 2024