Basso Profundo

Technically correct and poetically beautiful, Orbital sings a song of love for the lone, madly spinning planet we call home. Roughly 90% through her novel, Samantha Harvey writes:

“Before they came here [the six astronauts on the International Space Station] there used to be a sense of the other side of the world, a far-away-and-out-of-reach. Now they see how the continents run into each other like overgrown gardens — that Asia and Australasia are not separate at all but are made continuous by the islands that trail between; likewise Russia and Alaska are nose to nose, barely a spit of water to hold them apart. Europe runs into Asia with not a note of fanfare. Continents and countries come one after the other and the earth feels — not small, but almost endlessly connected, an epic poem of flowing verses. It holds no possibility of opposition.”

“An epic poem of flowing verses” — this phrase exactly describes Orbital. Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize, Harvey’s lovely extended piece of creative perspective on the Earth does indeed flow with uninterrupted beauty. In her slender novel the author manages to take up cosmic issues, issues which her intrepid astronauts deal with, discuss, reflect upon, and absorb during the endless orbits (16 every 24 hours!). She freights her characters with personal issues as well; she doesn’t overdo this, it’s not her focus. But she does do it enough to keep her cast relatably human. No, her focus is Earth, endlessly spinning 250 miles below their hurtling craft. Breathtaking descriptions of multiple dawns and sunsets (eight of each every 24 hours) appeal to our logical minds and stir our imaginations. And Harvey helpfully includes a Mercator projection map of the world and inscribes the paths of each orbit for those of us who like to follow along.

Never have physics or astronautics received such poetical treatment. There are fleeting views of the Milky Way during the brief dark periods, but Harvey confines her close observations for the Home Planet. She composes lovely etudes, imbuing them with love and wonder, and renders them in gorgeous poetry. A highly deserving Booker winner, this is not a book to miss!

Simon Tolkien’s protagonist Adam Raine matures from a boy in turn of the 20th Century London to a soldier in the Somme in the Great War, and along the way occupies a long and inescapable series of no man’s lands unique to himself. And of course the No Man’s Land to end all No Man’s Lands occupies the focus and wields its heavy influence on the rest of the narrative, as it did in England and its combatants at the time. This book covers this murderous crucible, this stupendous stupidity, extremely well, charting its influence on a wide variety of characters. The author deals with it in a way that is comprehensive, wise, and gratifying.

A spooked horse tramples Adam’s mother to death on a London street early on, and disconsolate father and son move to the north of England, to a coal mining town. There Adam’s father Daniel hopes to lead the miners to better wages and working conditions, much as he helped labor unions in London. When they first arrive in the north, in a town call Scarsdale, Adam is a lad going on 15 years of age, and occupies a no man’s land — instead of working in the mine, he continues his education at his father’s insistence, and shows enough promise that he could attend university eventually. It separates him from the other boys his age, and marks him forever as a coaldust-free outsider.

Tolkien lets the drama build as Europe heads toward its collective lunacy. After Adam enlists, he’s eventually made a lance corporal because of his reliability and leadership skills. Again, he’s separate from the men, many of whom he knew from Scarsdale. The novel flows inexorably toward the Somme and gains gravitas and Adam suffers alienation as the war narrative goes forward. The author handles this superbly, and when Adam is sent home from France for a week’s leave, he cannot shake loose from his wartime experiences long enough to even communicate with Miriam, the woman he loves and who loves him. I honor Tolkien’s very realistic handling of Adam’s haunted self.

And the author handles all of his weighty issues with the same grace and maturity. Pick up No Man’s Land and give yourself over to a fine, gratifying story of a hero who lifts himself up in spite of his fears and flaws, and an author who set himself an immense task and fulfilled every expectation a reader could possibly hope for.