‘Flying flags in a windless world…’

BSU Creative Writing & Publishing student Theo Bawa-Hellens reflects on Orbital by Samantha Harvey, winner of the 2024 Booker Prize.

It is without doubt that Orbital is a poignant piece of literary fiction. It makes an indelible impression, welcoming and leaving the reader with the overarching question: what is Earth without its children, and us without Earth?

With its intriguing setting and masterful writing, the 130-page novel is proof that the best escapism doesn’t necessarily have to be fully fledged fantasy, but simply life as most of us have never experienced it before. The novel, which is set in space, is practically plotless, and is instead filled with description that is stirring and immersive; Harvey makes space strange yet familiar, and the ordinary feel new.

A stellar cast

Themes of existentialism, belief and human connection are written from the perspective of six astronauts and cosmonauts, each of whom are confronting their thoughts and feelings while observing Earth. There’s Nell, who reflects on her life in Ireland; Roman, the commander who has been in space for more than a year; Pietro, the ‘natural-born astronaut’; Shaun, a Christian grappling between homesickness and his desire to never leave space; Anton, who thinks about his marriage back home in Russia; and Chie, who is grieving her mother. In just a few dozen turns of the page, Harvey makes you feel connected to each soul – particularly Chie, with heartwarming (and gut-wrenching) anecdotes of her home in Japan.

Harvey makes you wonder what Earth would look like, or who she would be, had humans never captured her.

From space, Earth is formidable. Harvey personifies it as a mother with her children circling above, questioning their existence without her. They watch as she, Earth, endures the plight of natural disasters across her countries, magnificent in their ability, yet equally terrifying. Even in space the group sometimes crave the customary: family life and normal day-to-day activities. On ground however, Earth is ‘landscaped by want’. Most of our natural resources have been shaped by us. Every forest, beach, mountain and ocean has withered under our touch. Harvey makes you wonder what Earth would look like, or who she would be, had humans never captured her. Are her children killing her from the inside out, an ungrateful and uncontrollable lot, blinded by greed?

Us, the reader, watching each astronaut as they, in turn, watch humanity below feels like a close observation. To witness how they fold and adapt under the weight of the universe is reflective of an experiment: whether Shaun will still believe in God, how long past a year Roman can bear to stay in space, or how Chie can carry on with the burden of grief. Six different stories intertwined so intricately. A test of strength and hubris.

Breathing space

Space itself is also personified by Harvey. All at once, Orbital both breathes life into space and renders it barren, as though it is alive through human curiosity, leaving the question of who one is without the other. She suggests the Moon yearns for human contact fifty years after the lunar landing; does it miss the people who gave it meaning? The ones who ‘insist on flying flags in a windless world’, but who may be the only ones to offer it just that, for all we know? Does making our mark in space offer hope for scientific development? There is no doubt that this is a novel designed for curious souls, offering a near-tangible intimacy with our universe.

To be nowhere and everywhere at once makes no time of the essence. Space doesn’t know clocks, and time sweeps through each sunrise and sunset like breath. It becomes something of a subtle lesson that this time is not ours; we will only watch the sunset so many times, witness natural phenomena even less, and pass having never known time outside of ourselves. But up there – that’s how you could never lose it. By the next day it would return, as would the astronauts, weary from travel and yearning for a touch of home, for feet on soft ground. Orbital will teach you that, like Earth, we are merely a brief moment in time, and that ‘We exist now in a fleeting bloom of life and knowing, one finger-snap of frantic being, and this is it’. Inevitably, time is what takes time from you, as it did for Chie’s mother.

Harvey offers us the strangely comforting sentiment that ‘We matter greatly and not at all’. To think that our existence in such vastness is not special, no matter what our wins or whether we reach the ‘pinnacle of human achievement’. It is stranger then that this is exactly why each human life is special. Our being, feelings and choices are not dependent on the grander life form that holds us, but on how we decide what matters. Somehow, this makes our place in the universe so simple and yet so complex. Our containment on this earth is both a gift and a conflicting confinement. Harvey – writing with the utmost literary lustre – reveals why.

Speak with any reader of Harvey’s books and they’ll tell you how she articulates every line like no other. A beautiful language of her own. It’s rare for a novel to leave such a profound mark on a reader. Orbital will make you contemplate the world we live in; Earth is not simply a vessel that carries us, but an integral part of who we are. Each character has their own psychology and motivations for space travel, but they are all the same without Earth – helpless, with only one another to pull through each orbit. However this book leaves you, it is not a feeling you will forget.