Orbital

There is a long queue at the local library for Booker Prize winner, Samantha Harvey's novel Orbital, but I was able to find it on the shelf at the Athenaeum. Orbital traces a single twenty-four hour period on a space station circling high above the Earth, staffed by six astronauts; the space station loops around the planet sixteen times in the 'day.'

Orbital is an elegant, beautiful little novel with not a word out of place. It flows effortlessly between the very small -- tiny details of the astronauts' life in the cramped tin can -- and the very big -- the beauty of the continents viewed from space, without borders or any hint of human habitation, except for the city lights at night, and the vastness of the galaxy beyond. There is not much in the way of plot, but this is not a novel about story. It's a meditative, gorgeous, thoughtful voyage, compressing big ideas into a few pages.

Orbital has popped up on a few people's Top 10 books lists (the ABC is running a countdown of 21st century books at the moment ), and I can understand why. This is a book to treasure, and a worthy Booker winner.