This month’s Magpie book club pick was Orbital by Samantha Harvey — a sweeping poetic meditation on our planet via the shifting lenses of an international group of astronauts orbiting the earth on the way to the moon. From a narrative standpoint, the plot is low-battery; the sole distinctive happenings in the novel are the death of one of the astronaut’s parents while the astronaut is in orbit, and the gathering, impact, and dispersal of a typhoon, as witnessed from space. In this sense, the book is a novel, but barely; it unfolds in crisp time (16 orbits over 24 hours) but we don’t have any climax or denouement — instead, a drifting sense of wondering and wonderment at the condition of being a human being in the Milky Way, the various ways we have marred our globe politically and environmentally, what it means to create art and bear witness to beauty while here for our millisecond of consciousness. (Among other “lightweight” topics – ha! I tried to explain the book to several friends while in Bermuda and perhaps the most concise way to capture it: “it’s asking what it means that we are here on this planet.” No big deal.) I found the book’s sense of narrative weightlessness — the way we drift in and out of its characters’ consciousnesses, the elegant approach and handling of the philosophical, the accretive and epithetic style, and the sporadic appearance of Chie’s lists (as though these have glided into the text and are bobbing gently against Harvey’s prose) — a fascinating and deft achievement on Harvey’s part: the text performs the experience of floating in space, especially in the way it continuously returns to what it means to be a part of earth, to belong to it. Earth exerting its gravity. The passage that best captured the novel’s peripatetic space-pulse for me:
“Companionship is our consolation for being trivial. And so, in loneliness and curiosity and hope, humanity looks outwards and thinks they might be on Mars perhaps, the others, and sends out probes…Maybe one day we’ll look in the mirror and be happy with the fair-to-middling upright ape that eyes us back, and we’ll gather our breath and think: OK, we’re alone, so be it. Maybe the whole nature of things is one of precariousness, of wobbling on a pinhead of being, of decentering ourselves inch by inch as we do in life, as we come to understand that the staggering extent of our own non-extent is a tumultuous and wave-tossed offering of peace.”
Wow — ! I underlined dozens of passages like this for the sheer gorgeousness of the writing. It is breathtakingly poetic, and immediately invites the reader into a contemplative state. The novel’s ethos reminded me of Rilke’s “Go to the Limits of Your Longing,” in which he writes: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.” Harvey embodies that spirit, witnessing the terrifying while permitting herself to back-stagger at the magnificence of earth and the expanse of space. There is room — in fact need — for both, she seems to say, a message I found hopeful.
This is the kind of book I will return to in my pre-writing rituals; I almost always begin my writing sessions with reading. Usually poetry — Mary Oliver, or the delightful grab bag of one of my anthologies (open to a random page and find inspiration in a stray line). Sometimes one of a handful of a few beautifully-crafted essays or non-fiction pieces: Patti Smith’s on failure; Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech; Wintering by Katherine May; Rebecca Solnit; Mary Oliver again. Harvey belongs on this list for me; I’ve already placed the book in my studio for that purpose. The flex of her language, the way she incorporates hyper-precise diction with the abstract and multivalent, is the perfect engine starter for a creative act. If you are in any way creative (and we all are), this is a great morning read — just one “orbit” (chapter) at a time.
What were your thoughts?
Orbital Mood Board.
Which are your favorite space movies? I’m having a hankering to watch some. As a child of the 80s, I grew up wearing a NASA sweatshirt and wholly believing I might be ejected into space while at space camp (does any else remember that movie? formative for me!). Do you have any other space books or movies you love?
I had fun putting together the mood board below (full Pinterest board here!) and I discovered that Nasa has its own Pinterest account?! Pretty cool.
Orbital Book Club Questions.
+How did the shifting perspectives read for you? Did you feel like you understood the characters individually by the book’s end? Why or why not? (And what might Harvey have intended to accomplish with the presentation of her characters?)
+What did you make of the chapter in which we zoom in to see Chie’s mother? How did this fit with the rest of the novel?
+Would you characterize this book as “a novel”? Why or why not?
+What did you make of the motif of the typhoon in the novel? How did this impact the characters, and why do you think it was one of the only true “happenings” in the book?
Orbital Playlist.
I had the best time compiling this meditative playlist — I’ve been listening to it while writing this week, and it gives me a surging, wondrous feeling. You can find it on Apple here and Spotify here. I’m especially obsessed with “Space Song” by Beach House and “Nightvision” by Daft Punk (more lo-fi than you might be expecting).
While I was compiling this list (the first nine tracks below!), I learned that The Moody Blues released its album “To Our Children’s Children’s Children” (two tracks from this on the playlist) in 1969, and it was inspired by the moon landing. An interesting companion text to this book; the album similarly investigates what it means to be a human in our solar system.
Also: note that Sturgill Simpson’s “Welcome to Earth” made this list as well as last month’s Wild Dark Shore inspired playlist. I loved the crossover there – now I’m wondering if I can find some thread between each of the book club picks we read in sequence.
Orbital Cocktail: The Saturn.
I am planning to make a tiki cocktail that initially appeared in 1967 called The Saturn in order to celebrate this book. I am following the recipe here, but a lot of other sources specifically mention the importance of garnishing with two lemon zest rings (Saturn’s rings!) so will not be skipping that step! You can buy the orgeat and passion fruit puree online from Liber and Co.
INGREDIENTS:
1 1/2 oz. gin — we like Roku and Monkey57 right now, but historically I am a Hendricks girl; I am also kind of curious what would happen if you used the purple-hued Empress gin for this? Would it make it spacier?
1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz. orgeat
1/4 oz. passion fruit purée
1/4 oz. velvet falernum
PREPARATION:
Blend all the ingredients together with 1 cup of crushed ice until smooth. Pour the contents into a rocks glass filled with 4 oz. of fresh crushed ice.
*NB if you do not have a crushed ice function on your ice maker, you can use one of these classic Viski ice bags and mallets. This is what we do at home!
**These starry rocks glasses from Half Past Seven would be the perfect vessel for this cocktail!
Orbital-Inspired.
Some of these just aesthetically made sense to me; others are more on the nose. Permit me to again rave about the Hatch Restore, which is one of my favorite discoveries of 2025. The charming moon and sun animations are just the icing on the cake to a gentler, screen-less way to wake up each day.
FELLOW COFFEE MUG // NASA T-SHIRT // ORBITAL // STAR CLUTCH // STAUD MINI // OGEE “MOONSTONE” ILLUMINATING STICK // JANE WIN MOON AND BACK NECKLACE // FOLLOW THE SUN JOURNAL // BOSE OPEN AIRPODS // HATCH RESTORE // NOON AND MOON COCKTAIL GLASS SET
Next Month’s Book Club Pick.
Next up: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, a forbidden love story set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles that was recently shortlisted for The Women’s Prize. My sister-in-law was raving about this book (and she has fantastic taste), and it is currently being adapted to a television series starring Gillian Anderson (fellow “Sex Ed” lovers rejoice!) and Tom Cullen (whom you might remember as the handsome Viscount Gillingham in “Downton Abbey”). I thought it’d be fun for us to read and compare when the show is released (no date set, but expected this fall 2025). As an aside, literary romance is my favorite genre and I’m thrilled to include one in our club.
P.S. If you’re a Magpie Book Club email subscriber, you received a special bonus newsletter today on this book review! You can sign up for those here. (If you already subscribe to my newsletter, you received this as well!) I will be sending out a once or twice a month newsletter to the book club list!
P.P.S. More recent book reviews here and here. Beachy book reads for this summer here.
P.P.P.S. What drew you to your home?
I loved reading your thoughts and reflection on Orbital & agree that the reflective prose is a beautifully constructed mystical meditation on the human condition, nature and atmosphere, and the smallness of everyday life vs. views from afar. I tried SO hard with this one but DNF-ed after about 1/3 of the book – something I rarely do! I needed just … something… more? Perhaps it was due to starting the novel during a work trip where it seemed to put me to sleep on the to/from plane rides + decompressing in my hotel every night after a long day of being “on”, but I needed something more. Maybe I’ll revisit in a year or two during a quieter phase of life. It’s more a personal commentary on what I needed as an escape vs. the book itself!
That being said, I read Wild Dark Shore about a month ago and found such elemental through lines in the literary observations on nature, tempests of the wild, unseen parts of the planet, and the isolation vs. bond of humans in a remote location. I like to think you had an intrinsic anticipatory thematic link between these book club picks!
oooh I’ve been wanting to read Trespasses for a long time! This may be the impetus for me to actually pick it up 😉