It was the enthusiasm of Reading Matters that moved me to put this Booker Prize winning novel by a British author on my Books to Read list in 2023. In the past I have enjoyed seeing videos of Chris Hadfield brushing his teeth in the space station, and that was the extent of my knowledge. This novel does an amazing job of putting you in the minds of those who do this work by following the six people who live there for months at a time over the course of 24 hours during which the space station orbits the earth 16 times.
While the earth is orbiting the sun and spinning on its axis, the space station orbits the earth sixteen times in 24 hours. The space station inhabitants recreate 24-hour days though they live through 16 sunrises and sunsets in that time. Trying to think how it fits together makes my head hurt. The space station creates walls, floors, and ceilings only theoretically as there is no gravity and they sleep in sacks in locker-like contraptions.
While the physical adaptations necessary to survive in a weightless environment are described, the focus is on how their view changes. There’s something about being able to see the whole planet that changes your perspective. To prepare the reader for thinking about this, the author describes the painting Las Meninas by Velázquez, much analyzed, to quote Wikipedia, “for the way its complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion.” As the viewer, we see Velázquez painting ostensibly the king and queen who we see only in a mirror. Or perhaps he’s painting ladies-in-waiting as the title suggests. Then there is the daughter, the dwarves, chaperones, and a dog. One of the astronauts declares that surely it is the dog that is the center. The reaction of another is,
Now he doesn’t see a painter or princess or dwarf or monarch, he sees a portrait of a dog. An animal surrounded by the strangeness of humans, all their odd cuffs and ruffles and silks and posturing, the mirror and angles and viewpoints; all the ways they’ve tried not to be animals and how comical this is, when he looks at it now. And how the dog is the only thing in the painting that isn’t slightly laughable or trapped within a matrix of vanities. The only thing in the painting that could be called vaguely free.
Then the author gets to the heart of the matter:
They have talked before about a feeling they often have, a feeling of merging. That they are not quite distinct from one another, nor from the spaceship. Whatever they were before they came here, whatever their differences in training or background, in motive or character, whatever country they hail from and however their nations clash, they are equalised here by the delicate might of their spaceship.
On the door of the Russian WC a sign says, “Russian Cosmonauts only,” and on the US toilet door it reads, “American, European, and Japanese Astronauts only.” Here’s the reaction of the crew: “The idea of a national toilet has caused some amusement among the crew. I’m just going to take a national pee, Shaun will say. Or Roman: Guys, I’m going to go and do one for Russia.” And later
On the craft’s internal cameras Mission Control watches the crew in flagrant disregard of these edicts and there’s no point trying to make it different. Astronauts and cosmonauts are much like cats, they conclude. Intrepid, cool, and can’t be herded.
The author notes that unlike in past centuries, when people believed the earth was the center of the universe and everything orbited around it, we have a different view. But it would take far more distance from the earth to realize its true place in the universe. “Its beauty echoes — its beauty is its echoing, its ringing singing lightness. It’s not peripheral and it’s not the centre; it’s not everything and it’s not nothing, but it seems much more than something. It’s made of rock but appears from here as gleam and ether, a nimble planet that moves three ways — in rotation on its axis, a tilt on its axis, and around the sun.”
It’s painful to stop here, so I will mention that I have failed to show how beautifully the author describes the earth, the backstories of the crew, and so much more. It’s awfully early in the year, but this is probably the best book I’ll read this year. After I finished writing this, I discovered I had read another book of hers and admired it: The Wilderness.
Samantha Harvey, Orbital, Grove Press, 2023, 207 pages (I read the kindle version). Available in the public library.