Details:
- author: Samantha Harvey
- full title: Orbital
- narrator: Sarah Naudi
- genre: literary fiction
- topics: #space, #lifeonearth
- publisher: Recorded Books
- publish date: 05 Dec 2023
- timing: 5:07:00
My Rating of the Audiobook:
- content: 💙💙💙.5
- narration: 💙💙💙💙💙
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| Goodreads |
Excerpt from the Book:
They look down and they understand why it’s called Mother Earth. They all feel it from time to time. They all make an association between the earth and a mother, and this in turn makes them feel like children. In their clean-shaven androgynous bobbing, their regulation shorts and spoonable food, the juice drunk through straws, the birthday bunting, the early nights, the enforced innocence of dutiful days, they all have moments up here of a sudden obliteration of their astronaut selves and a powerful sense of childhood and smallness. Their towering parent ever-present through the dome of glass.
My Thoughts:
I’m not sure what to write about Orbital. It’s a short literary fiction novel centered around people living on a space station orbiting the Earth. Six astronauts and cosmonauts (two women and four men) from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds are aboard the space station. They are from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan. The story unfolds within 16 orbits or 24 hours.Orbit is a beautiful meditation on life and space. The writing is very good. But it’s pretty plotless otherwise. It has no main story to glue everything together and make it memorable. And maybe that is my biggest issue with it. Because of that, I’m afraid the novel won’t stay with me for long.
About the Author:
Samantha Harvey has completed postgraduate courses in philosophy and in Creative Writing. In addition to writing, she has traveled extensively and taught in Japan and has lived in Ireland and New Zealand. She recently co-founded an environmental charity and lives in Bath, England.Her first novel, The Wilderness, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009, longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize and won the 2009 Betty Trask Prize.
