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 precision and power.
Why then did the book leave me cold? It shouldn’t. The plot, though not the novel’s strongest concern, is sufficiently intriguing. It follows the lives, past and present, physical and emotional, of astronauts aboard the International Space Station. As they circle the world they watch with increasing concern as a weather system builds sinisterly.
The characters, forced into close proximity and friendship, harking from countries that often display national enmity, are believable, and in so far as their emotional lives are concerned, relatable. You get a real sense of what life must be like as an orbiting astronaut: the thrill, the stale environment, the mundanity.
To cut to the chase! I admired this book enormously but I didn’t feel that delicious bibliophilic urge to turn the pages. It felt like staring at great art. Impressive but too cool, too far in orbit.
Al
Buy a copy here: Orbital a book by Samantha Harvey.