The book was presented by Wendy H.M.
Present: Katherine C. (with thanks from everyone for hosting our holiday meeting and lunch), Barb, Denise, Katharine J., Kerryn, Pat, Sealia, Susan A., and Wendy
Wendy began with a few words about the author. Samantha Harvey is English, born in Kent in 1975. She has degrees in creative writing and philosophy and now teaches at Bath Spa University. She has traveled extensively and taught in Japan and has lived in Ireland and New Zealand. She recently co-founded an environmental charity—a commitment that you see in her writing.
She has written several novels and one non-fiction book about her own insomnia. It’s called Shapeless Unease. In the Toronto Library interview she describes how her writing and sleep deprivation are linked. She says that since suffering from insomnia she has an intense but shorter focus. She wrote Orbital in short bursts of “instinctive energy”.
Her earlier novels have a single narrator or protagonist, while this one has a variety of voices and tones. In Orbital, she zooms in on the interior of the space station and then zooms out onto what’s beyond it. She also reveals in the Toronto Library interview that after reading A Month in the Country she wanted to try a novel where nothing much happens to the humans and the focus becomes their environment. So she hit on the notion of writing a “space pastoral.” Instead of the conventional novel about space travel where you have a plot-driven catastrophic narrative, she wanted to show the space station as an inhabited, domestic, realistic environment. At first she tried relating a month on the space station but realised it would be too much, so instead, it’s a 24 hour period with 16 orbits around the earth.
Katharine commented that this is a book for insomniacs. Kerryn enjoyed the audio book. Some felt it was overly descriptive and plotless. Barb agreed that there is no plot, but found it pleasant once she got used to it. It expands the boundaries of our reading. We discussed why the Booker Prize committee chose this over James and decided that it was probably because it is experimental and innovative in rejecting a human centred plot. Peggy Rigaud emailed to say that she thought it was beautifully written, with gorgeous descriptions and breathtaking images. Out of this world, one could say. Although she had to admit that as she drew nearer the end she began to skim these same descriptions — there is only so much variety in space.
Wendy mentioned that this novel tends to polarise readers into lovers and haters. Katharine confirmed that MEL didn’t order a copy of the book, because one of the committee members was vehemently opposed to it.
The Goodreads responses are all over the place. Wendy read out two contrasting opinions:
FIVE STAR: “This book is gorgeous, totally breathtaking. A spatial meditative and metaphysical odyssey. Using the backdrop of space and astronomy to explore down-to-earth human behaviors and experiences. Very unique to have your novel set in space yet mostly talk about what it’s like to be on Earth.”
ONE STAR: “Samantha Harvey, who I’m sure is very nice but also apparently became quite fascinated by the Wikipedia entry of Voyager, presents to us her Google Earth travelogue. Orbital is an essayistic file of recurring lists, rolls, catalogs, registers, indexes, directories and listings about various geography and other hobnob things noticed by a group of astronauts in orbit. …. Come here for surface-level musings about space and God and nature and stay for the lists and lists and more lists.”
Wendy surmised that the one star review may have come from someone who knew a lot about the various space programs. Samantha Harvey didn’t know anything about the subject. She had to do a lot of research in order to write about it. Everything was a surprise to her. She knew that you floated in space, but not why. She found fascinating the fact that in orbit, the astronauts are in a continual state of free fall. In fact, everything she found was amazing to her. She asked herself how to alchemise fact into fiction. How to create a spell that she can invite the reader into? How not to break the spell by technical facts?
Pat picked up on the mention of Harvey’s study of philosophy, asking “Where is the philosophy?” Wendy replied that the book de-centres the usual novelistic focus on human action and gives more than equal attention to the planet and even the cosmos. The meditation (pages 27-30) on the place of the earth in the universe seems philosophical more than spiritual— a revision of humanism. Man is no longer central. Earth might seem “the centre of everything” p. 27 but in fact it’s “a piddling speck at the centre of nothing” p. 28. The scope is large, the setting is the universe. Humans are small and yet somehow godlike at the same time in their distance from and perspective of earth. We find contradictory statements—paradoxes eg p121 “We matter greatly and not at all”—and these allow Harvey to give an idea of the strangeness of the orbital experience and the strangeness of humanity’s position in the universe. Barb agreed that the book knocks humanity down a peg or two. The result of this change of focus is that a number of readers are alienated by the absence of human interaction.
Wendy asked where to put this novel if you had a bookstore. The responses suggested the dilemma: Science fiction? philosophy? poetry? Booker prize winners? Not with the novels, some felt, because of the lack of plot and character development.
We don’t learn all that much about the six characters’ lives. We don’t get into their relationships with each other. There’s no mention of politics. Though on earth countries may be hostile to each other, the astronauts disregard orders to remain separate. They use each others’ toilets and share food. They even drink each others’ urine. They are described as being like a family, or even parts of a single body, yet they don’t interact all that much. Barb pointed out that while on earth, we theoretically have the whole world to choose our friends from, on the space station, there is no choice. Denise was surprised by two things: by the way the astronauts’ days are regimented with repetitive tasks and by the effects of space travel on the human body. We agreed that the regimentation gave essential structure to days that were made chaotic by the 16 orbits with their 16 sunrises and sunsets. For Wendy, their concentration on their tasks and their limited interaction comes from the need for personal space in a very confined setting. Barb compared the situation to an elevator, where you try not to make eye contact because of the proximity to strangers. The astronauts are trained to be self-sufficient—they go through psychological testing—and they are picked in part because of that capacity.
The novel’s structure is very different in that it follows the 16 orbits. So in at least a third of the chapters the characters are sleeping. The spaceship goes round and round. Early on in the novel, there’s an acknowledgement of this problem of how to tell about this experience—Nell writing home “the small things are too mundane and the rest is too astounding” (11). There is “none of the usual gossip” …, “the ups and downs”, only “the round and round” (12). The NYTIMES review describes the novel as “nearly free of plot.” “No alien race invades. No sentient planet turns people mad. The technology behaves.” How does Harvey inject variety into what some readers find repetitive or monotonous?
Susan felt the enchantment of the novel at first, then tired of it. She admitted though that there are lots of thought-provoking moments. Denise pointed out that toward the end, the orbits get shorter. We get the point. Kerryn said that Harvey works through her own thoughts. Barb felt that the change in points of view creates variety. Also there are switches from dark to light and the change in the view that showcase different parts of earth. In answer to the charge that nothing happens, Wendy suggests that the typhoon is an actor in the novel—it’s given agency. It’s born on page 1 from gathering winds and in the final chapter, while the astronauts sleep “The typhoon has smashed itself to pieces against the land” (135).
Samantha Harvey says that she thinks of her composition in terms of music. In what way might it be musical? Wendy found that she uses music as metaphor (example p. 25 description of new morning in orbit 4 or p. 28 earth’s “ringing, singing lightness” the universe “a giddy mass of waltzing things” “sings with light” 36) but wondered how the connection might be structural? Barb said that the novel reminded her of jazz. Is it because of recurring themes? There’s the theme of children and parents. Chie and her mother, Pietro and daughter. Nell’s mother is dead but news of Chie’s loss revives her grief in a dream (119-120). Then there’s the metaphor of earth as mother, the astronauts as children. Denise pointed to the map of 24 hours of orbits that prefaces the novel. She compared it to a musical staff, and pointed out the rhythm in the repetitions. Katharine C. queried whether the astronauts live without music. They listen through headphones as they exercise.
Wendy mentioned that the painting by Velasquez is introduced early on. What’s the point? it’s made something that binds Shaun to his wife. But the meditation on perspective seems important. The question of perspective is evoked in the discussion between Nell and Shaun about God and the earth “Hers an occurrence of nature and his an artwork” (45). Seeing and being seen is important in the novel. Is there a connection to Roman's dream of the photograph taken by Michael Collins (42-43), where the photographer is the only human not in the picture of earth. There is a contrast between the two images, the two cultural moments. Pietro says the subject is the dog (104-105)—the only one who knows what he is an animal. So the painting shows the way in which humans are constantly striving to deny their animality. It’s also about power structures and the struggle for dominance.
The question of progress is raised by Pietro’s daughter (51-53). Is progress beautiful? For Pietro it’s unequivocally beautiful. On reflection though, he acknowledges that it’s destructive. Progress is linked to the atom bomb at Nagasaki that killed Chie’s grandmother. There’s a similar ambiguity in Chie’s photo of her mother Moon Landing Day (60). Why was it on the wall of their house? Why is she scowling? The the novel emphasises all the signs of global warming. For Sealia, the novel raises a question about space travel: the problem is not if we could, but if we should. Most of us agreed that the project of going to Mars is madness. We should fix the earth instead. Peggy Rigaud e-mailed that the novel confirmed It did confirm her life-long desire NOT to be an astronaut.
Wendy wondered about the temporal reference of the novel? Is it set in the present? In the near or distant future? There are references to the aging space station and to a new moon shot with crew of 4 (10). The consensus was that it’s the very near future, although space travel has become privatised nowadays.
Katharine asked whether we thought high school readers would like the novel. Kerryn (who has two teen-aged children) thought that her son would just give an eye-roll and hate the long sentences and the lack of action. However, her poetry-loving sixteen year old daughter might love the book. It could take adolescents out of themselves, help them escape from the stress of being a teenager.
Finally, isn’t the novel a kind of love poem, celebrating the earth as seen from from the space shuttle? “The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. … If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it” (9).
