Latest news with #SamanthaHarvey
Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
An affair with your aunt? I never made a beeline for mine
T here are not many Booker-winning novels of this century you would be happy to tip your camera at. I suppose you could try with last year's winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, in which some astronauts do absolutely nothing of interest while circling the Earth at 16,000mph. If I were Harvey I'd have put a couple of aliens in it, maybe a horrible one hiding in the water tank and another — a friendly one who helps to defeat the one in the water tank — banging on the porthole trying to get in. Or anything, frankly: a line of interesting dialogue, or a compelling character. Perhaps even a story. And so it has been for most of the century, except for 2014 when the Australian Richard Flanagan took the prize for what was a comparatively conservative work of fiction — and here is The Narrow Road to the Deep North (BBC1/iPlayer) on Sunday nights, the work of Screen Australia and starring Jacob Elordi, who titillated the world in Saltburn and is receiving superlative notices.
The Spinoff
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending July 11
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books' stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $60) Still going strong. 2 Abundance: How We Build a Better Future by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (Profile, $40) If books could rule the world. 3 There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak (Penguin Random House, $26) A moving, generous intergenerational novel that shows how water connects us. 4 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Vintage, $26) The kind of novel you can read in one day and then think about for months. 5 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35) Could make some comparisons to a certain mushroom trial over the ditch but it might be too soon. 6 No Words for This by Ali Mau (HarperCollins, $40) The Spinoff's Alex Casey and Claire Mabey had a lot of thoughts and feelings about this memoir. 7 Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (Serpent's Tail, $30) The road trip novel that's really about intergenerational trauma. 8 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (Vintage, $24) The predecessor to number nine on the Wellington list. 9 The Safe Keep by Yael van der Wouden (Penguin, $26) One of life's perfect novels. 10 The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb (Simon & Schuster, $40) A new father, freshly addicted, struggles with his relationships. WELLINGTON 1 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin, $60) 2 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Vintage, $26) 3 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) Terrific novel that Taika Waititi just might be getting his fingers into for the film adaptation. 4 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) Another terrific novel that would make a beautiful film, also. 5 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 6 Pūkeko Who-Keko by Toby Morris (Puffin, $21) Dad jokes for the win! A terrific and terrifically fun new picture book by beloved Toby Morris who has taken the humble Pūkeko and given him a witty, adventurous book that will delight all ages. The genius is that the question and answer format makes a read aloud experience interactive and funny while also helping children (and adults) stretch their vocabulary and think inventively about language. Bravo! 7 A Voice for the Silenced by Harry Walker ($35) Harry Walker gave a fascinating interview over on RNZ's Saturday morning show about this book which gives voice to people in prisons. 8 M ātauranga Māori by Hirini Moko Mead (Huia, $45) If you're unaware of Professor Mead's work, here's a bit about him: Distinguished Professor Tā Hirini Moko Mead Mead (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Manawa and Tūhourangi) is the author of over seventy books, papers and articles. He was foundation professor of Māori Studies at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and was an inspired founder of Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi in Whakatāne. A scholar of Māori language and culture, Tā Hirini was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2006 and received a knighthood in 2009 for his services to Māori and to education. 9 The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Jonathan Cape, $38) In the Times Literary Supplement, Claire Lowdon writes: 'The Emperor of Gladness shares much with its predecessor [On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous]. The protagonist, Hai, is the gay Vietnamese American son of a refugee mother who works in a nail salon. He has fond memories of a schizophrenic grandmother. Once again, he is a teenager – just. 'He was nineteen, in the midnight of his childhood and a lifetime from first light.' In both books, the opioid crisis haunts the narrative and claims the life of a young man beloved of the protagonist. Above all, the two novels have a common poetic telos: to discover beauty in lives lived on the margins of society. 'My dream was to write a novel that held everything I loved', says Hai, 'including unlovable things. Like a little cabinet.'' A post-apocalyptic tale of women and friendship. The Spinoff Books section is proudly brought to you by Unity Books and Creative New Zealand. Visit Unity Books online today.
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Orbital by Samantha Harvey audiobook review – lyrical, hypnotic reading of otherworldly tale
Tracking the movements of six astronauts on the International Space Station, Samantha Harvey's Orbital – the winner of last year's Booker prize – imagines the day-to-day lives of those who have chosen to be 'shot into the sky on a kerosene bomb and then through the atmosphere in a burning capsule with the equivalent weight of two black bears upon them'. Only basic information is provided about the crew, who are from Russia, the United States, Japan, Italy and the UK. Harvey is more interested in the tasks undertaken to keep themselves healthy and their lodgings shipshape. Simultaneously expansive and intimate, Orbital reveals how the usual routines of eating, sleeping and exercising are fraught with challenges when you are weightless: toothpaste foam must be swallowed rather than spat out and cutlery adhered to the table using magnets. Harvey is also alert to the isolation of the astronauts, even though they can't get away from one another: 'They are so together, and so alone, that even their thoughts, their internal mythologies, at times convene.' Yet their capsule proves a utopia of sorts where earthbound quarrels and borders cease to exist. Cooperation is vital as they go about their work while breathing the same recycled air. Actor Sarah Naudi is the narrator, providing a lyrical and hypnotic reading that is in keeping with the otherworldly setting. As the team hurtles through space, orbiting the Earth 16 times a day, they debate the existence of God and reflect on the wonder and fragility of human life. From their rare vantage point, 'the earth … is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour.' Available via Penguin Audio, 5hr 7min Death at the Sign of the Rook Kate Atkinson, Penguin Audio, 9hr 31min The sixth book in Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series begins with the theft of a valuable painting. Read by Jason Isaacs. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Who Wants Normal? Frances Ryan, Penguin Audio, 8hr 34min Drawing from her experience and those of other prominent Britons with health conditions, the Guardian columnist reflects on what it means to be disabled in the 21st century.
Sydney Morning Herald
04-07-2025
- General
- Sydney Morning Herald
When the world keeps you awake: Finding sleep in anxious times
Words like payload worry me. Deploy and warhead. Bunker-busting munitions. Diagrams to illustrate how the Shahed-136 drone works, from target-lock to firestorm. Images of bodies like so many parallel ghosts. A wide-eyed child amid the ruins, her bakelite doll. You get the picture. This mess we're in. The need to know the names, the nuclear strike zones of Natanz and Fordow. Our urgent geography lessons, the squeeze point of Hormuz. Welcome to our new vocabulary. And also the reason unthink – the modern verb – has gained traction across databases, as futile as 'un-thought' can be. Perhaps this madness is why I found a book last week, or it found me. The tiger on the cover caught my eye, as did the title: The Shapeless Unease (Vintage, 2021). Sound familiar? The freefall anxiety we struggle to manage. The doomscroll morsels we never seem to ration. This invasive language we've gained overnight. Overnight being the key term. Samantha Harvey, winner of last year's Booker Prize for Orbital, has seen this earlier work repackaged, an eclectic swag of thoughts and memoir dealing with her chronic insomnia, or My Year in Search of Sleep to quote the subtitle. In brighter times, in calmer nights, we take sleep for granted, dozing like bears, invidiously oblivious. No scientist can pinpoint exactly what sleep offers us, not to the nth degree, which is why Harvey relies on Shakespeare to underscore the miracle. Macbeth calls sleep the death of each day's life. A state of suspended innocence 'that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care'. Elsewhere it's 'the balm of hurt minds'. Or the 'chief nourisher in life's feast.' Terrific, but how do you get enough? Or in Harvey's case: any. She lies awake dwelling on the Brexit shitfight (this was a pre-Gaza publication), her cousin's undignified death ('which has invited all deaths'), her ongoing sleeplessness. Grimly it dawns on the author that 'the desire for sleep in also the denial of it; the more you want it the less it comes.' Loading There it is again: the futility of unthinking, or maybe the cost of overthinking. The burden of carrying the world to your bed, despite our nightly privilege of respite. In a salvo of self-reproach, Harvey writes, 'Stop thinking. You are always thinking. Then the thought: that was a thought, the thought to stop thinking. Then the thought: that was a thought, the thought that it was a thought to stop thinking.' And so on. A vast gyre of wakeful static in the lost cause of letting go. Like the best of restless writers, Harvey bumps into a vital discovery, this notion of 'nocturnal forgiveness'. Globally, if not personally, life can be too heavy to carry for a day, let alone a night as well. You need to unbuckle, unthink, put the Sisyphean sack down for a spell.
The Age
04-07-2025
- General
- The Age
When the world keeps you awake: Finding sleep in anxious times
Words like payload worry me. Deploy and warhead. Bunker-busting munitions. Diagrams to illustrate how the Shahed-136 drone works, from target-lock to firestorm. Images of bodies like so many parallel ghosts. A wide-eyed child amid the ruins, her bakelite doll. You get the picture. This mess we're in. The need to know the names, the nuclear strike zones of Natanz and Fordow. Our urgent geography lessons, the squeeze point of Hormuz. Welcome to our new vocabulary. And also the reason unthink – the modern verb – has gained traction across databases, as futile as 'un-thought' can be. Perhaps this madness is why I found a book last week, or it found me. The tiger on the cover caught my eye, as did the title: The Shapeless Unease (Vintage, 2021). Sound familiar? The freefall anxiety we struggle to manage. The doomscroll morsels we never seem to ration. This invasive language we've gained overnight. Overnight being the key term. Samantha Harvey, winner of last year's Booker Prize for Orbital, has seen this earlier work repackaged, an eclectic swag of thoughts and memoir dealing with her chronic insomnia, or My Year in Search of Sleep to quote the subtitle. In brighter times, in calmer nights, we take sleep for granted, dozing like bears, invidiously oblivious. No scientist can pinpoint exactly what sleep offers us, not to the nth degree, which is why Harvey relies on Shakespeare to underscore the miracle. Macbeth calls sleep the death of each day's life. A state of suspended innocence 'that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care'. Elsewhere it's 'the balm of hurt minds'. Or the 'chief nourisher in life's feast.' Terrific, but how do you get enough? Or in Harvey's case: any. She lies awake dwelling on the Brexit shitfight (this was a pre-Gaza publication), her cousin's undignified death ('which has invited all deaths'), her ongoing sleeplessness. Grimly it dawns on the author that 'the desire for sleep in also the denial of it; the more you want it the less it comes.' Loading There it is again: the futility of unthinking, or maybe the cost of overthinking. The burden of carrying the world to your bed, despite our nightly privilege of respite. In a salvo of self-reproach, Harvey writes, 'Stop thinking. You are always thinking. Then the thought: that was a thought, the thought to stop thinking. Then the thought: that was a thought, the thought that it was a thought to stop thinking.' And so on. A vast gyre of wakeful static in the lost cause of letting go. Like the best of restless writers, Harvey bumps into a vital discovery, this notion of 'nocturnal forgiveness'. Globally, if not personally, life can be too heavy to carry for a day, let alone a night as well. You need to unbuckle, unthink, put the Sisyphean sack down for a spell.
