Orbital
Samantha Harvey
Jonathan Cape, £14.99, 136 pages
Samantha Harvey’s Orbital is a quirky little novel, which charts a day in the life of six astronauts on a space-station, their relationship with each other, and ultimately, with the planet from which they come. They have been blasted into space to conduct experiments; they whizz round the atmosphere 16 times in 24 hours, 250 miles up.
It’s an exhilarating experience, for them and for us. These captives of chosen circumstances see more in a single day than most of us can hope to see in a lifetime. They are separated from life on earth by the nature of space itself, and the 17,500 miles an hour that they need to maintain to stay in orbit. They are kept on course by earth’s pull – in more ways than one.
