Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize.
The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour.
A book of wonder, Orbital is nature writing from space and an unexpected and profound love letter to life on Earth
Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.
Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?
---
An arresting, genre-defying novel about space, our world and the climate crisis. In ORBITAL, Samantha Harvey looks at the fragility of human life and asks questions such as: What is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?
Staff Choice: Iris
2024's Booker Prize winner! I haven't read many Booker winners before (not on purpose, that's just how it's worked out so far - several are on my TBR, but I can't seem to get around to them). I can't really claim this as a Booker read either; I read it way back in January, well before the longlist was announced. But it's a good book, and I'm glad it has won.
This novella is about six astronauts aboard the International Space Station. Anyone who knows me probably knows that I love novellas and I love space, so of course this was the perfect read for me. It's a gorgeous, thoughtful, slow-but-intense story that feels incredibly real. I've obviously never been to the ISS and so have no idea how accurate all the tiny details are, but it seemed to me like the author must have done a tremendous amount of research. A beautiful book that I'm sure to go back to!
Staff Choice: Damla
A topic that is so cosmically vast yet so atomically small could only be covered in such dreamlike, poetic writing. I really don't think I am overselling it when I say that the whole book was so majestic and ethereal, yet so human. It really makes you appreciate both our insignificance in the universe, and the beauty and importance of the smallest things our Earth and lives have to offer.
Love. Love. Love.