Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

This week's book guest is this year's Booker Prize winner - Orbital by Samantha Harvey.In this episode Sara and Cariad discuss prizes, Barnet, authenticity, and Rob Brydon.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Orbital is available to buy here.Cariad’s children's book The Christmas Wish-tastrophe is available to buy now.Sara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Tickets for Sara's tour show I Am A Strange Gloop are available to buy from sarapascoe.co.ukFollow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdo's Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdos Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is Orbital by Samantha Harvey. What's it about? Well, six astronauts, technically two cosmonauts, are watching the Earth as they orbit around it in one 24-hour session. What qualifies it for the Weirders Book Club?

Well, you've got to be a bit weird to want to leave all of your loved ones and go very, very high in the air, living in a tin can. In this episode, we discuss. Prices. Gary Barlow, Barnett, Recycling, authenticity and Rob Bladen. Hello. Carriead, just you and me. Just you and me.

In the quiet of space. I have to tell you. Oh yeah. Being in space, my absolute nightmare. Oh, same. Yeah. Wouldn't want to go in a million years. Not in a million years.

They're literal claustrophobia. Just thinking about it. If you could go to the moon without going through space, would you then want to do that? Not that fast. No, but looking at Earth from a long way away. I'd like to do that. I like a view. I love a view.

Do you know what? If I'd like good for Instagram, wouldn't it? Little selfie, me of the earth behind me. Yeah, like, sure. If someone was like, you can go to the moon and you just have to walk through his door and you're there. Yeah, they just extended the Elizabeth flying. You can get a nice sensible train there. It's not working past 10, but it is good.

When it works, it's really good. Yeah, but also, it doesn't seem like, there's not much there in the moon. No, no. You know, I don't, do I sound awful? Like someone who says, oh, I don't want to go to Venice. saying it on a telly. Because when people say that back traveling, I get annoyed.

Yes, that's true. It's to widen where you've been and what it's possible. But the whole thing terrifies me. Just like going to the bottom of the sea. I don't want to go. Oh, the sea, I'm quite a bit more keen on the midnight zone. Oh, scary fish. Yeah, I'd like to do that.

I don't like being where I can't breathe with that apparatus. Yes, I'm with you on that. I also don't like anything that says like, oh, you're being crushed. It feels like you're being crushed. It feels like you're being crushed. Oh, yeah. If this metal wasn't here. body would evaporate.

No, thank you. So I'm all right. We're both not really into that sci-fi, particularly, are we? Would you class this book of sci-fi? Because you touched the book. I did touch with. I'm not really in- I guess what I mean is, like, if things aren't real, you know I like an orc and an elf.

So I like fantasy more than you do. Yeah. Okay, so you would make that distinct from sci-fi. There's like Lord the Rings fans and the Star Trek fans. And we are not always the same. I'm so, so loved sort of the sun coming up on parts of the world. I kept thinking, will Lloyd you be looking for Barnet? There it is.

Cuba, Seville. Highest point between London and York, so probably can see it. We're talking about Orbital by Samantha Harvey, the Booker winner, 24. We went to the Booker Prize. Did we tell? Yeah, let's talk about it. We heard from the short list. We then saw the speech from last year's winner.

He gave a speech about how hard it is to write after winning a prize. So I wanted to ask you, reading a book after you know it's won an award. Does it change how you? you read it. Yes, definitely. Yeah. Because, I'll tell you well, we got invited to the bookers, have we mentioned that. And I hadn't read any of them because we got too much homework. And someone said to me, oh, orbital's short. It's a light, oh, it's a light one. So I downloaded it on my Kindle in a batch of insomnia, which I've had recently. They're all light on the Kindle, aren't they? No, the more you add, the heavier the Kindle gets. That's why I don't add too many. Yeah,

because it gets so heavy. Delete them. Yeah, yeah, go delete. Oh, God. Mirror in the light. It's really bringing it down. So I had already started reading Orbital before she won and I actually really enjoyed the beginning and then when I went back to it I did feel a bit like oh I'm reading the winner now. How did you feel? Like did you aware of her winningness? With this, with books and with stand-up shows, I think I've been through the mill so many times that I am able to understand that it's not about it's not about being the best. It's about being one, being important. advancing the form. Do you have a moment where you like,

like sometimes if I don't like a sentence, I think. I think, oh, I don't like that. I best she won the book. I wonder if that's how it is for reviewers. Yeah. That light has to switch on with the like, but what would I criticise? Yeah.

And what are the flaws? It was so other, obviously, otherworldly. Yeah, come on. Let's get into it. What did you think? Really. I loved the slowness of it.

How did you? I loved the weather. I loved tiny human. and lives. I love to have how few people it was. It's set on the International Space Station and it kind of each chapter is one of the orbits of the earth. So they see like, what is it, 16 sunrises or something like that. So it's, and there's a beautiful map at the beginning of how it goes around the earth. And that's all the book is entirely set with these six astronauts and two cosmonauts, to be fair. And that's it. And you're right. Yeah. So it's very slow.

And we get insights into their human lives, marriages or someone's lost their mom. while they're... Che has lost her mum. It's not a spoiler. No. And so they're being very human while the Earth, I guess, is being very geological. And there's a typhoon coming.

There's a typhoon coming. I mean, we should say nothing really happens in this book. Wow. Depends how you define things happening. Yeah, true. But it's not... Everything happens. But it's not like a traditional plot.

There's no aliens. I was expecting. There's no crash. Come on. No, like, because it's science... Because you're in space, every time they were like, oh, and he put the wrench down. And you were like, oh, is that going to happen?

Or there was a crack? You're like, oh, oh, because you're expecting that kind of science fiction and then the spacecraft. And it took me a while to realise, oh, no, nothing's going to happen. They're just in space. It didn't feel like nothing happened. It felt to me like the kind of book where you can spend, you could just read a paragraph at a time and soak it all in.

I mean, that's why I think it is a prize-winning or a shortlisted book. There's a paragraph about looking at the earth. And I thought, I could just read this over and over again. It's about looking at the earth and knowing that the earth isn't the centre of the universe. Yes. Oh, yes. I mean, she writes incredibly about the universe, like incredibly. She's thought so much about things that she doesn't know. Well, we know that she isn't an astronaut because we heard her say it on the stage when she got a prize.

Yeah, and she's a research and a woman who lives in Wiltshire and watched the ISS feed constantly. for years. That's how she wrote this book. Like she's never been to space. Yeah. But so it's a, it's a, which is what novelists do. It's an act of empathy of putting herself in a place. So brilliant. So, so they sometimes think it would be easier to unwind the heliocentric centuries and go back to the years of a divine and hulking earth around which all things orbited, the sun, the planets, the universe itself. You need far, you'd need far more distance from the earth than they have to find it insignificant and small to really understand its cosmic place. Yet it's clearly not that kingly earth of old, a god-given clod too stout and stately

to be able to move about the ballroom of space. No, its beauty echoes. Its beauty is echoing. It's 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. That is just so incredible. Do you know what? I loved to the beginning. I loved it. I thought it was amazing. And then she does, those paragraphs that you just read out, they come again. And there was just, I just felt a bit. Just like the earth. Yeah, I know, but it felt like I was stuck on the space station watching it again. I love that. I love that because it felt like, and I hate music,

but it felt like what people say about incredible classical music, where things come back and your motifs you've heard before playing again. You can't tell me too many times in too many different ways how astonishing it is that we are alive and we'll take it for granted at the same time as big. like, this is mental. That's not poetic. That's why I need a writer to write it for me. Because my take is, this is mental. There isn't a movement. The whole of life is happening, and yet the whole of life is stilted. That amazing conversation, the radio conversation about, well that question, aren't you ever? Crestfallen. And I thought, that's what an incredible word. The reason I loved it was because what we can imagine as humans is building it all up in our heads and expecting it to be incredible.

And then actually, you're just a human being who needs to sleep and eat and go to the toilet. The mandanity of being a human being is in the way. it's going to be disappointing when you're supposed to have space. I completely agree with you. Like, I love that. I thought she captured that. I feel like you met this book at the wrong time. I absolutely met this book at the long time.

Because you read another book in the middle of this one. No, I started it. Yeah. Then she won. Yeah. Then I bought it in Patel. This is a weird thing. Preferred it on the Kindle.

Every time I read it on the Kindle, something about the electronic words and the space. I'd really enjoy it. And then I'd go back to the paper for like on the tube. Don't ask me why. And then I'd think, oh my God, I've read like 60 pages on the Kindle. And then, It would take me an hour to read two on the page.

Reading it two o'clock of the morning, not able to sleep, perfect. Yes, I would say it's a really good book for that. Well, do you know, she wrote a whole book about insomnia. Right. She had a book called The Shapeless Unease, which is our only nonfiction, about this incredible bout of insomnia she had. And she said that influenced this book as well. This is her fifth novel.

And she's won awards for, like, she got long list of the booker for her first one. And she's been compared to Virginia Woolf. Right. And I thought, oh, that's interesting. Like, that helped me get my head around it in like those six cats. Because for me, I was like, these characters are a bit, like, sort of, you know. And then I was like, oh, I see it's that Virginia Woolf thing. I'm like, they're all kind of disparate, but they're all the same person.

And they're all, you know, that you're not getting that really strong. I know exactly how this person reacts. And that's not a failure. No, no. It's just a different style. Yeah, yeah. It's a choice. And she said that in the interview, she was like, yes, I'm heavily influenced by Wolf.

And it felt very intellectual. Yeah. So I understood everything she was doing. me want to go into space. I was worried she was going to be so good at writing, it would make me go, right, I'm 43. I need to do my GCSE math, then work my way up to be an astronaut,

get their retirement age, just put me in a box, send me around the moon. Getting this cardboard box, Sarah, off you go. Reinforced, reinforced cardboard. All the stuff they have to do, the description she took. I mean, that's amazing. Like, the caving and, like, squeezing through tiny bait.

That, to me, as someone who's strobing. And the logistics, the fact that every, I felt like so many elements, of their physicality were made real to me and it really reinforced how much I didn't want to do it I felt so claustrophobic

I didn't know how much it like destroys your heart I thought that was amazing like she was saying like they're up there and their bodies are completely being destroyed by being in space all of the forces that are on our body is what our body has evolved to cope with and that image of them

if they didn't do all those weightlifting exercises for three hours a day they would get out of their yeah it collapsed like like paper she said didn't they like paper brains yeah and the weakness of the human body. That's what scares me. I know I'm weak.

I don't want to be up against. But isn't it funny? Because I think our idea of space is like, whoa, floating around. It'd be so cool to float around. And then she describes like how horrible it is for your body to not know which way is up and how much it fucks with your brain

and how much your body wants to know where everything is and like you said, it needs force. Not knowing where your limbs are when you wake half in the morning because your brain's like, what have I done with my arm? Yeah, because you can't feel it. And I thought that's a great metaphor for life. But did you love that bit with the mice when they, after a week, they realise they can float. And so rather than clinging onto their cage.

I thought you'd be upset about the animal testing happening on the space. I mean, I'm not, I'm never thrilled about animal testing. But again, it felt just like a truth of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What they're doing and what they're trying to find out. Oh, you've changed your tune. She's pro-animal testing when it's on a spaceship. Oh, I'm really not.

I'm really not. No, the mice, when she said, and she kept talking to the mice to be like, stop. They're like clinging onto the bars. I thought that was really sweet when they all started floating. She was like, you're doing it. I thought there's other stuff like, so the International Space Station is shared between the Russian side and the, you know, America's eye, and the fact that the Russian side is crumbling, that, like, they're not allowed to use each other's toilets. I thought it was so funny.

It was really funny. There was some amazing, do you know what it felt like a really brilliant documentary? That's what I thought, like, I'd watched an amazing documentary, but if, but I wouldn't say to someone, oh, God, you've got it. Oh, my God. Like, I loved it. I was like, oh, it was really, really interesting. Like, I felt very heady. I think I read it at the right time

because I've just finished the Ministry of Time, which is lots and lots of story. But it's again about, and it's really like this book, beautiful but with more chunky story. But really about how do we exist in this time? Right. I guess that book is much more about

sort of historical, terrible things and future terrible things and how you are a small, meaty. heart beating human being within it all. There was something about it as well. Like these astronauts and cosmonauts have such a perspective. They see that we're just a tiny rock in the middle of nothing. And she describes like perhaps the astronauts feel like perhaps that is heaven.

We are already on heaven. And I was like, that's an amazing thought. But this is the afterlife. That really stayed with me. I was like, God, that's really interesting. I love the thing where they, and I thought that was one of the sort of shifts in the retelling is then realizing that everything is political and they can see that political of humanity on the

physicality of the earth and how are they not noticed that to begin with? Yeah, and they're watching this typhoon, which is one of the worst typhoons, it's clearly influenced by climate change and they're thinking about the people. They know people who are on the island is about to be completely destroyed,

and yet they're here on this perspective, again, like it's so interesting. They can't do anything, they have no power, they can just observe. That's what, to me, felt like the metaphor in terms of life and death. Yeah, it felt like such an interesting metaphor. But then I suppose something,

in my head thought, oh, everyone should read this book. And then I thought, they're not going to. But I felt sad. I think that's what for me felt so fantastic. It's like it is floating above something. Yeah. It's floating above something going, there is some stuff happening. It's not telling you as one human being.

But her speech was so beautiful. Maybe that's what it was. I came to this book, already having heard her speech about being a tiny person and being desperate to be part of something better or to make things better or creating change. I did a grief cast once with a NASA, girl NASA boss. You know, but her job is to look at like... I've seen as T-shirts in Topshop. R-I-P.

Her job was to look at like disappearing stars on the edge of the universe. And she was like one of the foremost experts in this field. She was the only woman working in this field. And her husband died very suddenly and she wrote a book about it. And I did seven years of grief cast and interviewing people. And most people are talking about very like grounded. grief of like it affected my life and my children and this is here. She's the only person I've interviewed who she literally was talking about it as if she was in

space. Like she was talking about like seismic shifts of like everything seems so epic and far away from her. And when she was talking about her grief, she was like, but you know she wasn't like, oh, you know, things happen. It was like, no, the earth is, we are stars. This is what's moving. This is what everything is.

That's how her brain makes sense of it. Yeah. And I was like, oh. Yeah. And I reckon if Brian Cox was talking about grief, he'd be like particles. Yeah. But it was just such an interesting, you could see that most people are dealing with such small feelings very, very close and everything is about like what's around them. Do you think it's feelings or is it language?

Because I think it might be the same feelings, but we've got different words to attach to it. But it feels like they're physically somewhere else. Like when she was talking about it, it felt like her perspective on why we die was so different to anyone. It wasn't like, it was like, I can't describe it. So she was almost for her, it's like, because she understands stars stopping light at the end of the year. universe and how that is part of it. She was putting her known, loved people in the same. Yeah, it's like she understood that we, she understood that people die because we're just tiny meat flesh puppets on a rock. And when you're talking about that episode.

That's exactly how she put it. But most people are dealing with like, but I'm, that's a speech I want on my funeral actually. And I want you to give it. Sarah knew we were just tiny meat flesh puppets on a rock. Let's sing the hymn, tiny meat flesh puppets. Never forget, but take that. She describes it as space pastoral. And I thought that's a lovely phrase, isn't it? And that's why those books, and they do so well. Well, should I read you what you say? Because it's just really interesting.

They asked her, did you want to write, this is a Guardian interview, against more plot-driven space narratives. Sort of shit I need. I like Alien as much as anybody else. I never saw this novel as being against sci-fi, but I didn't see it as having an awful lot in relation to it either. I thought if it's space pastoral, a kind of nature writing about the beauty of space

with a slightly nostalgic sense of what's disappearing, not just on Earth, but also the ISS itself, this really quite retro piece of kit which is going to be de-orbited after 23 years of rattling around at 17,500 miles an hour. And I thought, oh, that's really interesting that it's nature writing for space. And I think I came to it expecting sci-fi.

Yeah. Not sci-fi, but just something more traditional. And I think my brain took ages to catch up with it. Whereas I came to it's experts in an environmental book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think as I started it before, her speech. Yes, yes, that's the difference. So I was like, oh, I love it. It's all spacey and wow, like, this is a setup before. Yeah. Yeah. Like literally when she kept mentioning there.

Oh, I put this thing down. I honestly was like, oh, that's going to be important. Right, okay. Oh, no. We're still going around. It just took me a while to get my head around it. Did you study the planets in music GCSE? No. You didn't? No, I didn't do music GCSE. Well, not a die. Yeah. So it must have been pre-music GCSE, it must have been year nine. No, we studied. It had to do the planets. It had to do the planets. planets. Yes. I do know them but we never had to study them. So that's what, that's what

that's the musical equivalent of this, of this book. I just thought it was so, I mean, that's what so incredible is. She's writing in a style where it made me feel like I was there. Even if I, even if it had been a different language, I almost would have felt like I was in a spaceship. Another good thing I read relevant to this, that she said that when she was researching, so she'd constantly watch the ISS feed, and she started researching what astronauts, had written about their time up there and it wasn't very poetic and she said I felt like there was a gap

I don't think many poets get to go to space but that's what she was saying she was like oh there's this astronauts go they come back and they just tell you it was this temperature was this and she said exactly like you said at the beginning she was like oh there's a gap here for a novelist to fill in what

this means an artist to come and take this point of view and she was like that's what I wanted to fill and next sound like comedian I think there's still a comedy size joke. Don't tell me that Channel 5

would be doing stand up in space boating you out once a week and firing you off into the rocket. Oh that reminds me. My link is that Rob Bryden's got a travel show where they don't know where they are.

It's a bit like the traitors but they're uncoached trip all together at the one. But I saw him and he was winding me up about seeing you out with another woman so you'd never look happier and you were laughing.

He saw you in a restaurant. With Vanessa? I was it with Vanessa. I thank God for that. I said who was the woman? and what she looked. He said, oh, I just thought she looked so happy. Oh, my God. Never seen her having a better time. He was for his birthday.

And we were having a, it was like a proper, yeah, me catch up. And then we suddenly saw, I suddenly saw Rob Biden and, um, it was Alex Horn. And I felt like, I felt like a minor celeb. It's because he saw my face when I was like, what woman? Because I thought it was one of her imaginary friends again. He saw this, the little, like, the vulnerability and he went through. And he was like, oh, I think she's been sort of waiting for this for a long time, a really good female friend. So it really makes her laugh.

The other thing we should talk about is that she nearly stopped writing it. Did you hear about this? No. She mentioned it a bit of the book is that she wrote 5,000 words before lockdown. And then she thought, who am I, a woman from Wiltshire to be writing about this? And she gave up and thought, no. And then it was lockdown. She was writing lots of other things.

And she accidentally opened it on her computer and was like, oh. And she said she felt this like electricity from this document. It was like, oh, this is what I'm meant to be doing. But she really doubted herself. I thought, that's interesting. What do you think about people writing about things they haven't done? Because there is an obsession with authentic voice these days. Well, it's interesting because actually probably the lockdown

is the closest most biological earthbound people could get to being stuck in a place with a few people. Yeah. I think people who doubt themselves are probably much better at what they do than people who don't doubt themselves. I once had an audition for a film. And I'd read this script and I'd thought, oh, Jesus, this person is just, you know, curled this out and emailed it off.

And he said, I didn't even need to edit it. You know, when you write something really good and it just comes out, you don't have to change your word. And I thought, no. No, Jack Kerouac. Because that's not how good writing works. Yeah, that's not. No.

Imagine like William Blake being like, yep, 17 seconds poem. Just, like, that is what Jack Kerouac did. It's just sprayed it out of my brain. But he was on drugs and it was the 60s. It's like a signed timeline to get away with that. I think most people edit, and also. So come on Jack Kerak, he edited it. Of course he did.

Yeah, of course. So, so I think someone doubting themselves so hugely. Yeah, it's really interesting. Why don't yourself, you're so brilliant. This is such a fantastic thing. Probably adds to the quality of something. Yeah. To be reminding yourself, I am having to create an entire universe

that's going to have to be believable to someone else. And to look at it from all of those directions. But I think it's interesting because we have an obsession with authentic voice these days, which is valid, like important that people who have lived experience. But we also have the opposite. People love a character actor. They love a Gary Oldman becoming someone completely different. Yeah, but in writing, I think is different.

Do you know what I mean? I just think it's so impressive. That's why people love... You just want to talk about Smoshva. No, Atessa Moshva so much because all of her books are so completely different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And her writing styles are completely different.

My point is that space is something no one can authentically be, apart from this handful of astronauts. So it's quite interesting to me. Yeah. But... I'd write a really different, very different books. I'd love that novel.

I can see it be a classic. I can see it be in a timeless book. Yeah, God, it's amazing. A historical document of, very much this time, we are at the beginning of cataclysm, or, you know, it's already happening in some places in the world. Well, also, to capture that moment, like she said, that the ISS is going to be taken down and it's falling apart.

And then what is, and he, I love that bit, actually, when the astronaut has been asked by a newspaper, like, what is it mean for the future of space travel? And they've asked, like, a taxi driver and a celebrity and a chef, and an astronaut. and he's supposed to write this witty reply back and he keeps writing like it's the, what did he say

written by the gold pen of billionaires or something his friend jokes and I was like, that is what we're looking at people, rich people, rich white men conquering this next thing that seems unconquerable is the ultimate conquer. I know, I reframe it, they're fucking off, they're fucking off to space.

Oh, he's positive for you. I don't mind it. You don't mind it. Off you go. We'll come a visit. Close the earth. They're gone. What I did think was interesting is the narrative, again, the narratives that we have about space of like, it's cool, you float around because of so many films.

And I think what she did was so real that you're like, again, you were like, you really actually thought about it. Yeah, it was like, oh, rich people, you just want, what are you going to do up there? Like, nothing, things aren't growing properly. Your heart isn't working properly. You come back brain damage. I know. So like, when someone wants to climb Kilimanjaro because it's really hard, there is a physical exertion. There's there.

You still have that thing, I guess, which must just be. ape of like wanting to be high looking down. Human beings like being high. I like being on Crouch Hill. Looking at Canary Wharf. My daughter loves climbing as high trees as possible. Yeah. So it's an ape thing which appeals to the brain.

And yeah, get the rich people to go out there, cut off the Wi-Fi. But isn't it interesting though that what she's saying is like it's not the idea that it's a land to be conquered. And what I loved about this book is she's reminding you again and the again. this isn't land. This is space. And space doesn't have a centre and it doesn't have a point. And there is no god, it's a godless,

full of rocks and forces. And there's no, like the amount of, the amount of magic that happens on Earth, the amount of water and earth and life and seeds growing and sunshine, all of that stuff, there is a nothingness to space.

So the idea that man can keep conquering and the way she talked about the moon as well, just this utterly pointless rock. Yeah. Like, why does anyone want to go? There's nothing there. And, you know, talking about going to Mars and just this idea, this Star Trek idea that we've been fed of like, that's great, but don't worry, you can build an extension.

You can put a side return in. It's going to be all right. And it's like, there isn't anything, guys. This is it. This is it. And I think I also found that a bit bleak because I know what people are doing. And it's so depressing. I think it is bleak.

I think it is bleak. I think I found that hard. And it's bittersweet because it's. I found it hard. It's spending. People are just destroying it. Yeah. So that's what I mean.

Those astronauts and the. cosmonauts, they understand this is all we've got, it's already too late, like climate change is already fucking it's over, and I just thought this is the book, people need to be, but are the right wingers and the climate tonight is going to be reading this? Maybe you enjoyed it more on the Kindle because

papers are a waste of natural resources. There are a lot of things that are depressing, and it's then what we do with that depressed emotion. And that's why, the bit that you said you found irritating about are you crestfallen? Yes. Yeah. Because really, what is everyone experiencing right now?

Yeah, crestfallen. Every aspect of all, you know, humans on a huge scale as a species and then on a smaller scale as what's going on in politics and individually, we all hate our families. We're all disappointed with our careers and the ageing process. You sort of believe these astronauts might have, it's like gods. You think, oh, well, maybe they'll have something helpful. And they're like, no, they go high and then they look back and they go, yep, all the same stuff.

Still trees, guys, I'm just higher. Yeah. I think that's where story is a distraction. Yes, I wanted to be distracted. You wanted to be distracted. And she didn't distract you. She did. She kept showing me the earth. The reality, yeah.

She kept going, look at that typhoon. And I think, imagine if you'd had to read it again because the prize. Yeah, no, it's amazing. You know, you read it. It gets on the short list. You then have to read it again to decide a winner. And I think that's why it's a winner. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow. There was a really beautiful passage about how they sort of became each other's family. Yes, that was beautiful. That's what I felt would not be true for me in space. It would be a house share. I would hate everyone. Do you think you would go for it? People smell.

And I know that they sort of couldn't smell because they had sinus bunged because that's pretty lucky. But being around humans you don't love and their toilet habits and they're breathing and the way they chew. She sort of made it sound like you have to. Like they become because you're so dependent on each other. That's all you've got.

They are organs of the same body. Yeah. But that doesn't happen with housemates. Well, no, because you're not stuck in time. You can go out to see your friends and be like, I'm actually going out. But like, if you were stuck, floating around.

Like Stockheim Syndrome. Yeah, and constantly looking at the earth and seeing how pointless and pathetic and tiny we all were. I thought it was really sweet. I thought her description of how they became family and how they were beautiful like children was really sweet. Like they all fell asleep watching that film. That film that was gorgeous, wasn't it?

And her head with her ponytail floating around. I didn't need anything to happen because that was so sci-fi by itself. Oh, here we go. Look. In his email, her brother said in Halfchest, He hates being ill alone. It must be nice to be with five others all the time. Your floating family, he called it. Up here.

Nice feels such an alien word. It's brutal, inhuman, overwhelming, lonely, extraordinary and magnificent. There isn't one single thing that is nice. She went to put that thought into words for her brother, but it felt like she was making an argument or trying to outdo or undermine what he told her. So she wrote only to send love and attached a photo of the seven estuary at sunrise,

one of the moon, and one of Che and Anton at the observation windows. She finds she often struggles for things to take. people at home because the small things are too mundane and the rest is too outstanding. Exactly the same with how did your gig go? Yeah, I thought it was a bit that experience with you can't translate to someone. I can either tell logistics, how many people were there, how late we were, like starting. Or I tell you the massive stuff about what it's like to have hundreds of people listen to you. You said.

And you can't do either of those things, so you just go fine. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's the same for everyone with their job. Astronauts, stand-up comedians. We just get it, you know? We just get it, Space Station. We're like you, you know?

We wouldn't like to go where you are. But I'm sure Buzzholdron wouldn't want to pay 3,000 people on a Saturday night in Reading if that's possible. I don't think they have the venue, do they? Oh, look, I did enjoy it, and I would definitely recommend it. I think maybe it's good to come to this book prepared for actually what it is and don't be expecting sexy space. That's what might happen because it's one of prize,

people then see it in a bookshop and go, oh, cool. Yeah. And you're going to say there. Oh, cool. Is that not what people say in different space anymore? Cool, space book. Is that not what the... I'm going to give it to my mum and see what the science fiction fan thinks of it.

I'm quite interested to see what someone who is obsessed with science fiction thinks of it. She loves it. So your mom would go if I was like, okay, Elon's got her back seat free. Yeah. Well, I think also what she captures in this book really well is people who remember the moon landings. Like my mum was a kid when the moon. That's where her obsession comes from. They watch the moon landings.

It was obviously like... But then the challenger. This is the future. How traumatic that was. But that's so much later and that's a completely different generation of kids. Yeah, yeah. But the moon landing kids are like... And Star Trek was on and it was like, yeah, we're all going to be there.

This is the future. This is what we're going to do. Moon landing. Why don't my parents care about the moon landing? Because they must be the same age. No, my mom's older than your ones, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. 60s.

Yeah. It's seared in the brain of like, oh, wow. This is where we're going. This is what space is. and that's when she got obsessed with space because she was like we can go there, anything can happen.

I think we're 80s kids who saw things blow up and we're much more like oh it seems quite complicated and also that they didn't keep going yeah yeah it's someone you go to once and then

like Faloraki you don't want to go back yeah good stories but I wouldn't go back no I wouldn't I wouldn't go back anyway we liked it Roberto by Samantha Harvey

oh Wurbauda by Samantha Harvey congratulations yeah worthy winner we're going to read more of the Booker Prize shortlist aren't we now that we've got them all Oh blimey are we over the years.

Thank you for listening to the Weirdo's Book Club. Carriads Children's Book, The Christmas Wish Tastrophe, is available to buy now. And I'm on tour next year. I've got a new show called I'm a strange gloop. I'd love to see you.

I'm going everywhere. Bath, Leicester, Glasgow. Come along. You can get tickets from sarah pasco.com. You can find out all about the upcoming books we're going to be discussing on our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club.

Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.