By Sophie.
Congratulations to Samantha Harvey, who won this year’s Booker Prize for Orbital!
Chair of the this year’s judging panel, Edmund de Waal, had this to say about the book: “[…] Sometimes you encounter a book and cannot work out how this miraculous event has happened. As judges we were determined to find a book that moved us, a book that had capaciousness and resonance, that we are compelled to share. We wanted everything. Orbital is our book. Samantha Harvey has written a novel propelled by the beauty of sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets. Everyone and no one is the subject, as six astronauts in the International Space Station circle the Earth observing the passages of weather across the fragility of borders and time zones. With her language of lyricism and acuity Harvey makes our world strange and new for us.”
I’ve read the book and can only agree. It is an ode to Earth, this beautiful planet we are lucky enough to be alive on. The relentless pace of the sunrises and sunsets creates a bewildering time frame that helps the reader focus instead on the immediate here and now as well as the immensity that is past and future, and how little we really matter in that regard. The astronauts are a varied lot, but mostly they are simply human: celebrating, grieving, curious – and knowing they need to rely on each other far more than they can afford to focus on their differences. I found it a beautiful, somewhat melancholic story that allows you to get a little meditative as you read along. I think book clubs will love discussing it! And because I’m always taken in by how books look I want to give kudos to the designers on both sides of the Atlantic for making such evocative covers.
