Book Review: Orbital by Samantha Harvey

I had stopped in the middle of the book to say one word - Beautiful.

I finished the book and looked up to see what others had to say about it and found that my assessment was not very far from what author Joshua Ferris, who reviewed the book for New York Times, had said. He called the book "Ravishingly Beautiful".

The book spans ‘One Single Day’ in the life of six astronauts (make that 4 astronauts and 2 cosmonauts) aboard a space ship, 250 miles above the earth, which is orbiting the planet at 17,500 miles per hour. What does it look like - this pale blue dot at the far end of an ever-expanding universe on which rests everything we know and care for and believe in and think about?

What do six members of our own species, men and women who, to quote the bard, -- “with hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer”-- see when they look down on upon the rest of us during the 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets that make one Space Day?

This earth where each thing seamlessly dissolves into the next, the only borders that exist are between land and sea, where politics and wars are meaningless, this earth on whose surface have evolved and I quote from the book - "the igniters of fire, the hackers of stone, the melters of iron, the ploughers of earth, the worshippers of gods, the tellers of time, the sailors of ships, the wearers of shoes, the traders of grain, the discoverers of lands, the schemers of systems, the weavers of music, the singers of song, the mixers of paint, the binders of books, the crunchers of numbers, the slingers of arrows, the observers of atoms, the adorners of bodies, the gobblers of pills, the splitters of hairs, the scratchers of heads, the owners of minds, the losers of minds, the predators of everything, the arguers with death, the lovers of excess, the excess of love, the addled with love, the deficit of love, the lacking for love, the longing for love, the love of longing, the two-legged thing, the human being."

This earth, the only home we will ever know, at least for now. What do you see, when you see it from up there?

Read the book at one stretch like I did - the prose is to die for. You will also find yourself stopping every few minutes gasping for breath as you take it all in – both your own insignificance as well as the grandeur of the Universe.

PS: A word of caution before you begin: Put your ego in a tiny little box (tiny little box should suffice), lock up the box with the sturdiest lock you can find, throw the key into the deepest ocean, and then begin reading – Orbital.  -Salar News

Author is editor of Salar Digital English Daily