Orbital By Samantha Harvey – Book Review

Orbital By Samantha Harvey – Book Review

Review By Harsimran Kaur | Rating: 5/5

Some stories don’t end; they continue in their fragility to be loaded off somewhere to find an end. Stories of humans, their imperfections and inclination to sip the unusual taste of the forbidden carry on in vulnerability, an end that is not foreseeable. The reality is often crumbled in dreams; the dream then becomes the infallible reality; the reality and dream—both not so perfect collide to an astute awakening of self-deception.

All this, though, lives in our conscious. Unrestrained, we stick to the implausible to crack open our vulnerabilities. Tough and cynical as it may sound, we then gradually web a story of our ‘life’, impressionistic, sailing on a broad spectrum of extrapolations and expostulations.

Humanity still thrives among the civilizational paradox of antagonistic charade and disoriented emotions. If the story of ‘life on Earth’ is always defined by the ‘number of breaths adduce’ and the ‘palpable mist of the glass windows’ or the plants growing under the aegis of ‘stem savior faire’ then why there is a need to travel to other planets in search of life?

How different is the ‘Orbital obsequious’ of a spacecraft around the Earth to the ‘Orbital ontology’. Don’t both fear the impertinence of gnarled destiny that can take lives in a jiffy? Isn’t this the ultimate truth? But, in the story of life, we become reflective, always. Swayed by the egomaniacal aggrandizement, we tend to find the extra-ordinary, letting the ordinary bleed in the scaffold of neglected pride.

Isn’t Earth beautiful?

It has stories to tell so why we are trying to make new stories; esoteric and bold insinuating the entire fabric of human belonging? Are subsequent orbits around the Earth a plain circle of adventure or these orbital peregrinations has the ability to look at the ‘Planet Earth’ in equipoise?

Orbital is a story of belongingness to the planet ‘Earth’ in consanguinity; the more we move away from it we become less delusional of our insecurities because from the orbiting corner, we are able to see the planet as a whole; an incessant reality dreamt of in the precarious apostasy, and where the chiaroscuro of light & darkness are playfully intertwined.

Winner of the Booker Prize 2024, ‘Orbital’ by Samantha Harvey is mysterious and luminous. Six astronauts orbit around the Earth to reach the Moon but their virtues are put to stand-by. A new perspective thus takes shape to identify their ‘purpose’ contemporaneously watched over by what has been left behind.

Continents spread like a vast land unanimously stretched holding each other as if ‘boundaries’ have been withdrawn or these boundaries are just a falsehood suspended in wires of solipsism. What these astronauts see through their orbital peregrinations are not just inhabitants but unfinished stories of despair and destruction. Every orbit looks like a dream, albeit enmeshed with the bitter reality of ‘tumultuous typhoons’ and warfare of ‘depressed lives’. The profligacy of mountains dissected by raw-cut edges is filled with something ‘mythical’— it so seems from above; the precious ranges handing out the glistening winds which might be a treacherous blow encountered on the sand-laden ground.

All this looks like a dream, but in reality, the pride obscures the mental faculties; the ‘cosmic’ open it up, and here are these six astronauts deciphering the tangled paradoxes of life.  Maybe the orbits around the Earth help the planet to reveal itself in multitudes of eternity. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Why these astronauts are there where they are; all six of them? The hanging sleeping gallows awaken them often. They float effortlessly withstanding the microgravity, and the heart ricochets unattended emotions left behind. They still survive; is it to understand the cosmic recherché? What has Earth not given them; they duly contemplate or find the pejorative of self-sustainability been overshadowed by self-deception.

Is human civilization now finding a reason to be morally unrestrained; broken bones and pulsating heart rate being monitored. Have they become rats for experiment? What would one call it—a burlesque panjandrum of uprising eccentric ballyhoo, isn’t it?

The Earth now feels desolated. But the six astronauts are on a mission to the Moon. What discoveries they bring back may not turn out to be crenellations against the Earth? Or, it’s just an experiment turning out to be a pyrrhic victory. Absorbing and fundamentally stoic, ‘Orbital’ is transcendary. It questions the sclerotic human mind—the humanity pummeling the closed abrasions and pugnacious enough to seal it, if unworthy.

The question is also of belonging that humanity must answer!

TAKE AWAY

Engrossing and contemplative…

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