Orbital

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Orbital is a difficult book to review. On one hand it’s beautifully written with an almost poetic prose, and its heart is in the right place, on the other hand, there’s no plot. There’’s nothing really to keep you turning the page. It reads like a collection of wonderfully worded essay’s, that are all ultimately about separate subjects which don’t require a plot to hold them together. You could remove the sci-fi element, and it would be the same book.

The story, and I use the term loosely, is about six astronauts orbiting the Earth in a space station. While there they keep track of an impending typhoon, and share little insights into their lives on the planet and in space, and their philosophy of the world. And that’s it.

The framework does work to bring the collection together, but as mentioned, it is kind of unneeded. If I read the same stories as separate blogs they’d have a similar impact.

If it sounds like I'm slightly down on the book, I'm not. I liked a lot of the writing, and some of the essays were really good. It read like a travel book, a genre which I've read plenty off over the years. Maybe one of the more spiritual surf journal stories I’ve read.

It’s just, I guess I wanted a stronger overall plot. Something for the crew to achieve while they were in space. Not necessarily some action sequence or disaster, but well, something. Something that made it fiction, because honestly, this could have been non-fiction and I wouldn’t be any the wiser. If someone told me this was actually an autobiography, I'd believe them.

Some of the descriptions as they passed over the various continents and times of day were gorgeous, but became a little repetitive. The same goes for the numerous lists throughout. If the book was in fact just a collection of essay’s I feel a lot of these descriptions no matter how well they were written would be discarded as filler.

Ultimately it felt like a personal read from someone who had plenty to say about the Earth and the people inhabiting it. It’s written with love and care, and makes a wonderful travel guide for anyone orbiting the planet. Some of the essay’s I really enjoyed, while others felt a little much to me. Overall it was a quick enough read for me to like it, but it isn’t a book you have to plough through. I think it would actually read better reading a chapter a day, or even week. Pretend it’s someone’s blog.