Borrowed in Brooklyn

BPL · Book · 2023

Orbital

Samantha Harvey

A singular new novel from Betty Trask Prize-winner Samantha Harvey, Orbital is an eloquent meditation on space and life on our planet through the eyes of six astronauts circling the earth in twenty-four hours. A slender novel of epic power, Orbital deftly snapshots a day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space--not toward the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts--from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan--have left their lives behind to travel at warp speed as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. So are the marks of civilization far below, encrusted on the planet on which we live. Profound, contemplative, and gorgeous, Orbital is a gift--a moving elegy to our humanity, environment, and planet"--

Demand pressureiDemand pressure: composite score across the 12 tracked branches — rewards low availability, branches all out, recent drops, and (when exposed) public hold counts. Higher = harder to get borough-wide.

309

Available

11/27

Branches all out

3/11

Public holdsiPublic holds: BPL exposes 'people waiting' at the bib (record) level — one number per work for the entire 60+ branch BPL system, NOT just the 12 tracked branches. We capture the number when it's there. 'Not exposed' means BPL didn't expose it on this scrape — we never substitute zero for missing data.

not exposed

ISBN 9780802163622