Novelly Unproductive Book Club NYC

Discussion from our 3/2/2025 NUBClub meeting

No one was negative about Harvey's meditation on space and many of us had effusive praise for its vivid descriptions and compelling imagery. There's no real plot in Orbital -- Harvey instead just put us in the viewpoints of the six astronauts floating in the space station and using the fact that their orbits allow them to see many sunrises and sunsets each day to reflect on the questions of the lifespan of the earth, the role of the small humans on it, the nature of scientific advancement, and the question of what it means to be an observer. A couple of us felt the book was a letdown because the characters of the astronauts were drawn rather thinly, although others argued is that the very selectivity of astronaut training that the book described meant they were quite similar people. Also, a lot of Harvey's meditations were standard to the narratives you hear from people who've been to space, so if you weren't really sold by the writing, you could see the reflections on the fragility of borders and the uniformity of earth from space as clichéd. But most of us thought Harvey worked a small miracle getting the reader into such a foreign experience and making the oddity and wonder of being on the space station so real. There were just so many interesting juxtapositions: the view of the tsunami in formation for days versus the quiet death of one astronaut's mother; the daily routines of rigorous exercise and experimentation versus the crack in the module; the absolute marvel of technology of the station versus its second-tier status to the moon mission. Your mileage is going to vary here based on how much Harvey's writing grabs you. If it doesn't, this is a slow book about some fairly basic space observations, but if it does, you will immediately recognize why Orbital won the Man Booker this year. It's worth checking out to see if it grabs you as well.