This was a very short novel that my mum lent me. It’s okay. The language is incredibly beautiful, and the premise is well executed; it takes place over a single 24 hour period – 16 orbits of the Earth – onboard the ISS. The characters are six astronauts who aren’t particularly detailedly drawn.
I thought it was a philisophical novel, but it’s not really. It just goes “ahh, isn’t space exploration cool? isn’t it emotional? wonderful!?” and so on. The descriptions of the views out the windows are excellent, but kind of wear, idk, I’m more interested in the astronauts’ personalities and interactions.
Ah okay, I looked the book up on wikipedia and apparently she had set out to write a space pastoral novel, so now everything about it makes sense.
Idk, I’m not sure what I got out of it to be honest. I already think space exploration is wonderful (if done for the right reasons!!) – actually, the novel was pretty good at exploring the history and different ways the astronauts from different countries/backgrounds relate to space exploration/Progress and their positions as astronauts, that was cool.
What else did I like? Hmm… the language was really nice, and i’m a sucker for the ISS. But yeah, grateful it was only short!