Ella Creamer in The Guardian:
Orbital, which was published last November and is now available in paperback, was the highest-selling book of the shortlist in the run-up to the winner announcement, with 29,000 copies sold in the UK this year. The book, which follows its characters over the course of a day as they experience 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets, is a “finely crafted meditation on the Earth, beauty and human aspiration”, wrote Alexandra Harris in her Guardian review.
At 136 pages long, Orbital is the second-shortest book to win the prize in its history; it is four pages longer than Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald, which won in 1979. Asked whether the panel’s choice is a vote in favour of short books, De Waal said “absolutely not”, adding that Orbital is “the right length of book for what it’s trying to achieve”.
Harvey said that she nearly gave up on writing Orbital because she thought: “Why on earth would anybody want to hear from a woman at her desk in Wiltshire writing about space, imagining what it’s like being in space, when people have actually been there? I lost my nerve with it, I thought, I don’t have the authority to write this book.” She said that Tim Peake, an astronaut, has read the book, and was “very nice about it”. He “wanted to know where I’d got my intel”, she said.
More here.
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