Orbital

July 14, 2025 /

Orbital ~ Samantha Harvey

YOU GUYS – I LOVED THIS BOOK.

6 astronauts/cosmonauts from various countries and continents are floating 250 miles above the earth, scientists on the International Space Station. The Space Station orbits Earth 16 times in 24 hours, and Orbital is a one day, 16 orbit slice of life. Is there a plot? Eh. There is shit going on down on Earth and there are astronauts heading to the Moon, but none if it affects them directly in the here and now. Does a lot happen? A couple of things. Is this a gorgeous, quiet, beautifully written love letter to our planet? Absolutely.

The inhabitants of the Space Station are of Earth, but not of Earth. Their job is sometimes tedious and their quarters are cramped. When they go out for a space walk, the gear is uncomfortable and chafes. They miss their families, one character’s mother dies (early on, not a big spoiler). They worry about people back home as they watch the effects of climate change, as they see a typhoon growing and barreling toward land. Mostly they think. Being above the Earth, watching it through their windows, brings up thoughts and emotions that are deep and profound for them. Life is not perfect on the Space Station, but boy, they love being there.

It’s just so beautifully written…I had to stop and take notes, and I never stop and take notes. I finished it on Saturday (it took me almost 6 weeks to finish…it is a short book, but I am a very slow reader of physical books, as I mostly read in bed at night and only get a page or two in before nodding off) and started re-reading it on Sunday.

Some passages I noted:

”Maybe human civilization is like a single life – we grow out of the royalty of childhood into supreme normality; we find out about our own unspecialness and in a flush of innocence we feel quite glad – if we’re not special then we might not be alone. If there are who-knows-how-many solar systems just like ours, with who-knows-how-many planets, one of those planets is surely inhabited, and companionship is our consolation for being trivial. And so, in loneliness and curiosity and hope, humanity looks outwards and thinks they might be on Mars perhaps, the others, and sends out probes. But Mars appears to be a frozen desert of cracks and craters, so maybe in that case they’re in the neighboring solar system, or the neighboring galaxy, or the one after that.” ~ Page 42

”Why would you do this? Trying to live where you can never thrive? Trying to go where the universe doesn’t want you when there’s a perfectly good earth just there that does. He’s never sure if man’s lust for space is curiosity or ingratitude. If this weird hot longing makes him a hero or an idiot. Undoubtedly something just short of either.” ~ Page 73

”And us? We are one. For now at least, we are one. Everything we have up here is only what we reuse and share. We can’t be divided, this is the truth. We won’t be because we can’t be. We drink each other’s recycled urine. We breathe each other’s recycled air.” ~ Page 94

”The lovelessness of his marriage is a fact that has come upon him gradually, one gentle dawning after the other. When he’s seen through the telescope lens the flow lines made by ships pulling at the ocean, or the ancient shorelines of Bolivia’s bright orange Laguna Colorado, or the red sulphur-stained tip of an erupting volcano, or the wind-cut folds of rock in the Kavir Desert, each sight has come to him as a winching open of the heart, a crack at a time. He’d not known how capacious it was, the heart. Nor how in love he could be with a ball of rock; it keeps him awake at night, the vitality of this love.” ~ Page 141

I really loved this book, and I’m glad I found it back on Independent Bookstore Day. Highly recommended.

22 Comments

  • PocoBrat

    July 15, 2025 at 7:50 am

    This sounds so beautiful, J.
    The phrase–“the royalty of childhood” really got to me.
    And it sounds like perhaps it’s the kind of book that benefits from the kind of slow reading treatment you gave it.

  • nance

    July 15, 2025 at 8:15 am

    What beautiful, thoughtful, and poetic writing! When I first saw the cover and read your initial synopsis, I discarded it as Not A Book For Me. I’m so glad I read further. It IS a book for me. Thanks for including these passages.

    Interestingly, my nephew Jacob’s bookstore is now on Bookshop.org, so I can order some books from him and help his new business, Ship to Shore, setting it as my local bookshop.

    I have a feeling this book will be one of my treasures.

    • J

      July 16, 2025 at 9:15 am

      I’m not sure I would have picked it up just based on a coworker unless I knew we loved the same books. Which is tough, right, because I might miss out!

  • Elisabeth

    July 15, 2025 at 4:03 pm

    This is now officially on my holds list at the library. I’m down the list quite a way, so it will take a while for it to come around for me, but I’m excited!

  • Ernie

    July 15, 2025 at 5:20 pm

    Wow, this sounds really interesting. You took notes – that right there is quite the sales pitch. Thanks for the review. It sounds like a book that’ll make the reader think.

  • Tobia | craftaliciousme

    August 2, 2025 at 1:57 pm

    I listened to it on audio and I think this book needs to be read. I felt I missed all the nuances and only towards the end I realized there were multiple people and that they just shared their thoughts. I dont knwo… maybe it was me.
    In the end I didnt enjoy it as much as I had hoped.

    Glad you got more out of it.

    • J

      August 11, 2025 at 3:00 pm

      Blog friend Nance just posted about this book today (8/11) and one of her commenters said she listened to an excerpt, and did not like it. She read an excerpt, and loved it. So I think you’re right, listening is not the way to go in this instance.