Has anyone read Orbital?

I thought it was beautiful - I really loved it. Earth was main focus, the space station crew were a tiny part. It has stayed with me & have gifted it to many.

I enjoyed it but like PPs was surprised at how long it took me to finish reading. The writing is so beautiful and rich and it really made me ponder human existence and the miracle of it all. I thought it was amazingly ambitious.

I enjoyed it but not sure it was Booker-worthy. I thought some of the writing was fantastic but also that it went a little over the top and felt a little bit like an A-Level creative writing class submission at certain points.

Overrated bollocks! So much hype about it over Christmas, huge displays in all the bookshops. The best thing about it was the cover, which was pretty. The rest was boring, no plot, no character development, just description after description of not very much! Underwhelming and rather disappointing IMO.

I found it a beautiful, contemplative, relaxing read. I got into the rhythm of the orbits by the space station.

Her earlier novel The Wilderness, about an architect with Alzheimer’s, is brilliant.

I agree. It was rather like an over long article in a magazine. I was reading it at the same time it was serialised on Radio 4. It was better when listened to.

I loved it. Tbh I thought the whole book was about climate change, in a snapshot both of Earth and a separate tiny world.

Thank you!

@FuzzyCaoraDhubh I like your review

I loved it. It was beautiful, thought-provoking and reflective. I agree with a PP that it’s the very opposite of insubstantial - it’s one of the shortest books I’ve read recently and one of the most substantial.

It is beautifully written. But isn't really a story I don't think. More a lyrical, reflective, multi perspective account of life on a space station. I didn't enjoy it like a novel but enjoyed the quality of the writing.

Yes , it was a four star book for me.
Interesting and well written imo

I got it on audiobook and lost interest with a chapter or so to go.

However, slowed down to about 90% speed, it's absolutely perfect for falling asleep to! It's a bit droney and very sedate. Pretty descriptions to imagine while you doze off. It's like a sleep app. Recommend it for this purpose.

I didn't finish it. I kept waiting for it to get going a bit more but it was quite repetitive. I skim read a few pages from about halfway to the end to check nothing else was going to happen. I read the ending. I could appreciate the use of language but personally I like my books to have a plot. I'm interested in what life is like on the ISS but I can get that from listening to an interview with Tim Peake!

I usually finish books but this one was taking ages and I felt it was blocking me from reading what I really wanted to.

I was so excited to read this having heard the author speak about it. I hoped for insights into what it means to be human, the fragility and beauty of life, the futility of lots of human endeavour etc etc. Sadly I was disappointed….. I was frustrated by the lack of plot/direction, the superficial characters, the obvious commentary, none of which I felt was fresh. At least it was short.

I’m half way through it and really enjoying it but like a previous poster I also loved Gilead

It was ok ,I would have preferred it if she'd added more depth and narrative to the 6 characters. I think that would have made it a better book.

I bought it for my husband for Christmas, and he wasn’t bowled over, said it lacked narrative. I read it last week and I can see what the op means, it’s actually quite hard to whizz through it as it’s not especially gripping. The descriptions are what’s important, the minutiae of life and how it is to live alongside others. The space station is a microcosm of life on earth, there were descriptions of love, death, family, food- all the things that make us human.
So I did like it, I also liked that it was short!

I see what you mean but it's not a piece of non fiction; it's something else. So presumably the "something else" was what you had a problem with; it didn't do anything for you. Which is fair enough.

To me was a prose poem. Listing the countries below then wasn't just about telling you where they were. But the fact that that is what you took from it says it failed as a piece of writing for you, in my opinion.

Yes. I liked it! I thought it was good. I liked how it played on the reader's sense of perspective. I felt the astronauts' sense of importance (their mission) and their insignificance (frail human beings) at the same time. It made me feel a bit dizzy, a bit odd. I definitely could never be an astronaut. I also had to read it slowly. It could not be rushed. I enclose my review in the screenshots below.

I was disappointed with it. My main complaints were:

• As a PP said, that there was far too much about what you could see out of the window. I don't need a list of Siberia, Mongolia, the Himalayas, etc, when there's a bloody map at the front that shows what each circumnavigation was flying over;
• With the whole book only covering 24 hours you didn't get to know or care about any of the characters (in fact I can't remember anyone's name and I only read it a month ago);
• And finally, this book might be interesting to a reader who knows nothing about life aboard the ISS, but if you've seen footage or read the accounts of astro/cosmonauts then you know as much as the author does, since she hasn't been there herself and has based her book on the accounts of those who have, which are already in the public sphere. So basically, I learned nothing from her book that I didn't already know!

Gosh, I think it’s the reverse of insubstantial—it takes on issues at the most planetary scale!