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Samantha Harvey’s ‘Orbital’ is the winner of The Booker Prize 2024. This slim novel is about six astronauts as they rotate in a spacecraft above earth. There to collect meteorological data and conduct scientific experiments, the astronauts observe the space from a unique vantage point. They see earth in all its glory and feel protective about it as they question what it means to be alive and what in fact is reality when they are so far away from home.

The good thing about writing a review of Orbital is that I don’t have to worry about the possibility of giving out spoilers, like I usually am while working on book reviews. It’s basically an account of what these six astronauts see from space and how they feel about it. There’s no plot as such except for the day to day occurrences in their lives. Their backstories make for tiny slivers of the story which takes place in one day but time is measured differently in space. Morning arrives every 90 minutes and each of the chapters record a single orbit of the earth.

Harvey has captured the psychology of these characters and interspersed it with visuals of the earth from space. You will get to be in a certain character’s head and then suddenly be jolted with views of the craters and ridges of the earth. The combination, I felt, works for a short while so it’s a good thing that the book isn’t long. I enjoyed the book but it felt like the narrative was dragging on by the end of it. Any longer and I would have probably given up on it.

But Harvey’s writing makes the scenes come alive in front of your eyes. You get a bird’s eye view of a space station and the universe that surrounds it. She describes it so well. It’s almost like you are the one on the mission. Harvey has written other novels like ‘The Wilderness’, ‘All is Song’, ‘Dear Thief’, and ‘The Western Wind’ and a work of non-fiction called ‘The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping’ which is a study of insomnia and its complexities. Judging by her body of work, it seems she’s fascinated with things that can’t be explained easily but attempts to do it anyway. Orbital might be her boldest work yet as there isn’t another piece of fiction like it.

In an interview, Harvey said she wrote Orbital during a period of anxiety induced insomnia. She started the book before the pandemic but most of it was written during the lockdown. That probably explains the sense of urgency and desperation in Orbital. The story makes you feel trapped—in the space station, the character’s heads and thoughts—and leaves you with little room to think for yourself. Despite being a novel, it’s also a book you can dip in and out of as there’s an almost essay-like quality to it. Don’t be fooled by the novel’s slim size, it’s not an easy and thus quick read and you could be a little confused at times. But I urge you to give it a try as it’s different and daring. 

Fiction

Orbital

Samantha Harvey

Published: 2024

Publisher: Vintage

Pages: 136, Paperback

Featuring 12 stories by different authors, all of whom are fans of Agatha Christie and Jane Marple, ‘Marple’ is a collection that you might want to give a miss if you haven’t grown up reading Christie. Otherwise, this anthology is a great book to pick up for a trip down memory lane. Some stories are short, some are long, but they all feature our favorite heroine Miss Marple and her charm and wit are on full display.

Miss Marple, one of literature’s favorite detectives, first appeared on print in a short story called ‘The Tuesday Night Club’ in Dec 1927. She reappeared in the novel ‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ in 1930, followed by 11 other books after that, as well as several other short stories. She is observant and intelligent and solves crimes because, with her keen eye, she doesn’t miss a thing.

Marple is an ode to St Mary Mead’s sharpest mind. The collection has stories from bestselling authors like Lucy Foley, Ruth Ware, Kate Mosse, and Leigh Bardugo among others. A murder mystery is a difficult genre to attempt in a short format. You have to get to it right away and there’s little or no time to set the scene or develop the characters. You run the risk of being unable to make the readers care. But the writers in the anthology know how to tell gripping stories and their craft is on full display. Despite having to keep it brief, they manage to build suspense.

Out of the 12 stories, there was just one I didn’t like. My husband, who was reading the same book with me for our two-member unofficial book club, didn’t like it either. It’s called ‘Murder at Villa Rose’ and it’s by Elly Griffths. It’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s about an imaginary murder that actually turns out to be imaginary. The author put absolutely no thought into it. All the others have solid elements of mystery in them. Murder at Villa Rose is just pointless.

For this collection, the publisher roped in established crime writers with distinctly different writing styles. The result is a collection where every story, despite having a common theme and similar setting, is unique and refreshing. All the stories, even the one I didn’t enjoy, get the essence of Miss Marple just right. Her mannerisms and quirks feel familiar. At times, I even forgot it wasn’t Agatha Christie’s stories that I was reading.

If I had to choose, I’d say ‘The Jade Empress’ by Jean Kwok, ‘The Disappearance’ by Leigh Bardugo, and ‘A Deadly Wedding’ by Dreda Say Mitchell were my top three favorites. In January, I read one story before work every now and then and it set a nice tone to my days. I’d constantly be thinking about whichever story I’d recently read with a smile on my face. More cozy than riveting, if murder mysteries are your thing these stories might be just what you need to power through a particularly rough day. 

Short Stories

Marple

Published: 2022

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 372, Paperback

Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, playwright, and poet. He has written 11 novels. I had previously read two books by Colm Tóibín, ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘Nora Webster',  and I had loved them both. Brooklyn was a special read. I loved the protagonist and the setting was calming. The story wasn’t sad or happy. It was a mix of both, just like things usually are in real life. What I loved about the story was that relatability, of nothing being overly dramatic or downplayed for the sake of fiction. 

The stories, in both Brooklyn and Nora Webster, were nicely crafted and written, the characters were simple yet fascinating, and the author’s writing was almost conversational and smooth. I would read anything Tóibín wrote, which is why I was eager to read ‘Long Island’ when I heard it was coming out. I was even more excited when I found out that it was actually a sequel to Brooklyn. 

Set in the 1950s in Ireland, Brooklyn follows Eilis Lacey after she returns to her hometown Enniscorthy in southeast Ireland for a funeral. She has secretly gotten married in America but still has a fling of sorts with a local named Jim Farrell. But Brooklyn wasn’t a story of deception or infidelity. It was about a woman trying to find herself in a world where her identity is always associated with someone else. 

Long Island follows Eilis almost 20 years later, in the 1970s. Once again, she’s chosen to return to her hometown to attend her mother’s 80th birthday and finds herself confronted by unresolved issues and ghosts of the past. This time she’s home because her husband cheated on her and she’s lost her footing and feels unsettled. She meets Jim, the man she had once had an affair with, and they sort of rekindle their romance. However, Jim was all set to get married to Nancy, who at one time used to be Eilis’s best friend, right before Eilis returned to Ireland. 

The plot might sound morose and even annoying to some. A few colleagues I was talking to said they would never want to read something that almost justified cheating and polygamous relationships. But Long Island, though dark and brooding, is an exploration of the complexities of marriage, being a woman, and fitting in. The story is narrated by Nancy, Eilis, and Jim and as you take turns getting into the character’s shoes and head, you begin to understand their motivations and see things from different perspectives. 

You don’t have to have read Brooklyn to read Long Island. Both of these books work really well as standalone novels. But together they are a masterclass in good writing and storytelling. Of late, I’ve been enjoying stories that don’t wrap up neatly in the end, allowing me to draw my own conclusions. Long Island’s ending is also open to interpretation. This isn’t a spoiler because you get a sense of how it’s going to end all throughout the novel. You know someone or the other will be hurt and that people aren’t going to always get what they want. The joy of the novel is in getting to know its characters, the main ones as well as the minor ones, as the author has written them with love, care, and a good sprinkling of humor.

Long Island

Colm Tóibín 

Published: 2024

Publisher: Picador

Pages: 287, Paperback

Rita Bullwinkel’s debut novel ‘Headshot’ was longlisted for The Booker Prize 2024 as well as the Center for Fiction Best Debut. It also made it to Barack Obama’s 2024 Summer Reading List. Bullwinkel’s writing has gotten her many accolades. Her short story collection ‘Belly Up’ won a 2022 Whiting Award. Her writings have been featured in various publications. She is the Assistant Professor of English at University of San Francisco in the US. 

Headshot is the story of eight teenage girl boxers. The story is narrated in a series of face-offs during a championship tournament. I hadn’t read anything like it before. The concept was new and refreshing and Bullwinkel keeps the story tight and action packed. As the girls box and compete, you get to know their stories—their past and their hopes for the future, their weaknesses and strengths, what drives them and what makes them tick, and the many characteristics that make them unique. Each girl has her own baggage and hang ups and they are all fighting their own battles, whether it is with themselves or within their families. 

The characters are complex and compelling. There’s Artemis Victor who thinks she’s the prettiest girl in the tournament but who will, even if she wins, always be second best to her sister. Her opponent Andy Taylor is haunted by the image of her father’s dead body. Without him, she needs someone to rely on. Rachel Doricko wears a strange hat and likes to intimidate people. Kate Heffer, on the other hand, is governed by plans and rules and thinks it is what will help her achieve success in life. Izzy and Iggy Lang are cousins. While Iggy has been inspired by Izzy to take up boxing, Izzy doesn’t understand why her annoying cousin would want to copy her. 

The narrative isn’t linear, hopping between the past, present, and the future, and the characters make frequent appearances which allows you to get to know them better. A commonality among the characters is that these are all teenage girls on the cusp of adulthood and they all belong to working class families. The author shows their struggles of trying to break free from whatever holds them back as well as their hopes for the future. I was invested in the story as I wanted to know what became of these girls after the tournament. Headshot isn’t a big book but it’s so nicely written and structured that the story feels complete. 

Bullwinkel has an eye for details and that makes the scenes come alive. I felt like I was watching a match while it happened and the girls were right there in front of my eyes. Even their thoughts and emotions were so beautifully described that I was totally consumed by these characters. The story also anticipates how the girl’s lives will pan out when they stop competing and whether they will even forge a career in boxing. In that way, it also examines what it means to be a sportsperson and how it defines their life. I was especially enthralled by the writing and found myself reading certain passages over and over again. 

The book isn’t that long but there’s a lot to unpack in the story. You might be able to resonate with a character or two or find that you identify with certain traits in different girls. It calls for a lot of introspection and that is what made Headshot an important read for me. I would recommend it to anyone looking for something new and immersive. You won’t be disappointed. 

Headshot

Rita Bullwinkel

Published: 2024

Publisher: Daunt Books 

Pages: 248, Paperback

Colm Toibin, one of my favorite writers, called ‘Small Things Like These’ by Claire Keegan the best novel he read in the year it was published. The book was shortlisted for the booker prize in 2022. Oprah Winfrey chose it for her book club in 2024. The book is short, at just a little over a hundred pages, but packs a punch. Even Oprah, in one of the videos on the book club’s Instagram page, says you’ll be thinking about it long after you’ve turned the final page.

The book is dedicated to the women and children forced to work at the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. Built to house women who had ‘fallen from grace’ but promoted cheap labor, Magdalene Laundries were stricter than prisons. Women had to work without pay and were only provided a meager meal at best. Their living conditions were horrifying, with many being forced to eat off the floor or sleep in dank places. In Ireland, the last Magdalene Laundry ceased operating only in 1996.

Set in Ireland in 1985, Small Things Like These follows Bill Furlong, a coal and timber delivery man, as he makes a shocking discovery that will change the course of his life. He’s living a content life with his wife and daughters when he stumbles upon something that involves the church. Bill doesn’t know how to deal with it and despite his wife’s insistence that he look the other way, he can’t help but get involved in it. The book is alternately slow and fast. What I mean by that is there’s a leisurely pace to life in the book but things unravel quickly once Bill discovers the town’s well-kept secret. 

Bill’s life hasn’t been easy. He doesn’t know who his father is and his mother dies when he’s just a child. But all his life he has been shown kindness by strangers who took him in and nurtured him. In a way, he’s come to associate love with kindness. Isn’t what you know of love and how you perceive love shaped by how you were loved while growing up? Bill has received kindness and it’s the only way he knows how to be. This dictates his actions and he can’t turn away when he feels someone needs his help. This might mean giving beggars all the change in his pockets or rescuing someone in trouble.

Despite the brevity, you feel like you really get to know the characters. I can’t fathom how Keegan has been able to achieve that but you come to care about the people in the story. Perhaps that is because Keegan taps into their vulnerabilities and shows you it’s possible to maintain grace under pressure. Bill is a man with a clear conscience and he does his best to live by certain principles. He’s a good husband and a caring father. When things go wrong, he doesn’t buckle. His goodness forces him to stand his ground and do what he thinks is right despite knowing it might be a hard battle. 

I read Small Things Like These in under two hours. It was so engrossing that I wasn’t able to put it down. It’s sad, horrifying, and strangely uplifting at the same time. It shows you what humans are capable of and that cruelty and kindness co-exist in the world and that it’s never one or the other but a mix of both. This is a book you’ll want to buy a few copies of, one to keep and the others to give to family and friends.

About the author

Claire Keegan is an Irish author who is known for her short stories and novellas. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, and The Paris Review among others. Two of her novellas have been made into movies. Small Things Like These has been adapted into a film starring Cilian Murphy and Emily Watson. She has received several awards including The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, The Martin Healy Prize, and The Olive Cook award.

Fiction

Small Things Like These

Claire Keegan

Published: 2021

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Pages: 110, Paperback

If I see a book of short stories by an author I haven’t read, I will definitely buy it. I won’t even have to read the blurb to decide. I just know I will enjoy it. And I’ve hardly ever been wrong. Even if I don’t like all the stories in a particular collection, I will enjoy a few and that will be enough for me to recommend the book to others. The same goes for my recent read ‘Dead-End Memories’ by Banana Yoshimoto. The book has five stories and I more or less like them all. 

Translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda, the writing was refreshing. Perhaps it was because I had never read both the author and the translator before. But I enjoyed every bit of it. The stories were beautiful and nostalgic. I could see me and my friends in the characters. All the stories are about women who, after some painful events in their lives, find comfort in small moments of everyday life. 

I was intrigued by the author’s name and I found out that Banana Yoshimoto is the pen name of the author Mahoko Yoshimoto whose father is a famous poet in Japan. She is the prize winning and internationally bestselling author of many works of fiction like ‘Kitchen’, ‘Asleep’ and ‘The Premonition’. In Dead-End Memories, Yoshimoto delves into the lives of women who are grappling with some sort of a transition in their lives. There’s a melancholic undertone to the stories but there’s a fair bit of drama too to keep things interesting. 

The women in the stories discover their strengths and weaknesses through varied experiences in their lives. A woman’s romantic life is shaped by the ghosts of a couple who live in the house of her lover. A hard-working editor has a near death experience that completely changes the course of her life—She’s poisoned at work and that changes her relationship with work and her co-workers. Though the stories involve romance, they aren’t centered on it. There’s also a recurring theme of food in the stories despite the stories never overlapping. It made me realize how much of our memories are shaped by the smell and taste of what we eat. 

Despite being short, I found myself taking time with the book as the themes are heavy, calling for a lot of reflection. They deal with abuse, rape, betrayals, and the end of a marriage. What I like about storytelling in shorter formats is that it leaves a lot of room for imagination and introspection. You can draw up your own conclusions and get many opportunities to question your own beliefs. Dead-End Memories is controlled storytelling. Yoshimoto doesn’t beat around the bush and gives you just the information you need to think about the story and their possible path or outcomes yourself. Some call her writing simple and superficial but I found it to be relatable and fun. I highly recommend this anthology. Read it, weep, smile, and think about some things and memories you have maybe long forgotten. 

Dead-End Memories

Banana Yoshimoto

Translated by Asa Yoneda

Published: 2024

Publisher: Faber & Faber Ltd.

Pages: 221, Paperback

Resolutions are overrated and perhaps destined to fail because of just how overly ambitious they are. This year, me and a few of my friends—comprising a medical doctor, a psychologist who has been practicing for five years, and an engineer who quit her job last year and runs her own business now—decided to list down some things we’d like to do in 2025.

We have always made shared resolutions but this year we decided to deviate from the usual routine and call them mindful habits. We’re also going to take it slow and not give up on a habit even if we fail a few times. I’ve asked for permission to share our list of habits or changes we’d like to make this year to inspire you all to maybe pick one or two to incorporate in your life or make a list of your own. Here are our top five things that we are going to follow in 2025 for a more disciplined and healthy lifestyle.

Meditate daily, even if for just 10 minutes

A couple of years ago, I took up yoga and meditation. I joined an online class and started doing an hour of it every day. The changes in me weren’t immediate but over time, people started commenting that I was calmer and happier. I had actually felt the changes in me before others noticed. I wouldn’t get upset over small things and was able to let things go without creating a fuss. Then after six months, the classes got over and I didn’t rejoin. I thought I could carry on without guidance. But then I started becoming erratic with my practice. This year, we’re planning to restart mediation and do 10 minutes to begin with. We will build up from there. Our aim is to make a habit to meditate for at least 30 minutes daily in the next six months.

Spend time outdoors

Exposure to morning sunlight is important to set the tone of the day. It’s also a good thing to do to get your daily dose of Vitamin D which is crucial for bone, muscle, and nerve health. All of us spend most of our time indoors, at work or at home, so we have decided to spend at least 10 to 15 minutes out in the sun as soon as we wake up. It could be while drinking a cup of tea or reading the papers. But this one is non-negotiable and it shouldn’t be that hard since all we have to do is open the door, step out into our balcony or garden area, and just bask in the sun. Alternatively, we have also decided to try to go out for short walks, mid-work, or spend some time in nature after we reach home.

Eat meat on the weekends

All of us agreed that we’d like to eat less meat this year. Many studies have shown that meat, especially processed meat, isn’t the healthiest thing for your body. We contemplated becoming a vegetarian for a year before deciding it would be too much too soon. So to take it slow and ease ourselves into it, we’ve decided to eat meat on the weekend and stick to a plant-based diet on the weekdays. This seems more doable than going vegetarian. This way we get to satisfy our non-veg cravings and we also have to experiment with our food, since we have to start eating all kinds of vegetables  and grains to compensate for the meat.

Sugar control 

Not eating sugar isn’t possible for us but for those who think they can do it, it’s one of the best gifts they can give themselves. Sugar is responsible for inflammation in the body which leads to many health issues, especially in the long run. Cutting down on sugar can help you lose weight, keep your blood pressure in check, and also prevent a lot of chronic diseases. We’ve all tried to stop eating sugar in the past and we’ve all failed miserably. So in 2025, our goal is to cut down on sugar and be mindful of what we are eating. We’re going to eat chocolates, but not every day. We’re going to have a slice of cake but we’ll stick to having it once a week at the most. The idea is to have as little sugar as possible while ensuring we don’t abstain from it altogether. This way, we believe, we will be able to give up sugar completely in the future.

Keeping our word

Oftentimes, we say we will do something and forget about it or we make promises knowing that we might not be able to keep it. We say yes when we want to say no. This sometimes has us doing things we wouldn’t have been involved in if we hadn’t said yes without thinking or if we had had the presence of mind to think things through. One of the things I’d personally like to change in 2025 is being able to keep my word. My friends agreed that if we all made promises we could keep, we’d feel better about ourselves and our reputations, at work and on a personal front, would also be so much better.

Shirley Jackson, who was born in San Francisco in 1916, was famous because of her short story ‘The Lottery’ which was published in The New Yorker in 1948. Readers were scandalized and sent her hate mail. But it didn’t stop her from writing and getting published. Her first novel, ‘The Road Through the Wall’ was published in the same year. ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ and ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ brought her more fame and went on to become all time classics.

She was mostly known for her horror stories but she also published two memoirs of life in Vermont where she lived with her husband and four children. For a writer who died in her sleep when she was 48, Jackson left behind a wide body of work. Two collections of her essays and other writing were even published posthumously.

I had only read Jackson’s famous short story and the novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I was actually looking for The Haunting of Hill House when I came across 

‘Life Among the Savages’. The blurb was intriguing, starting with: “Sometimes, in my capacity as a mother, I find myself sitting open-mouthed and terrified before my own children.” I bought the book without even opening the plastic cover to check the size of the font, which I usually do. There was no way I wasn’t reading this masterpiece. The font could be horrible and minuscule for all I cared.

It turned out to be a great read. The font size was perfect too, in the Penguin edition (published by Penguin Classics in 2019). I was captivated by Jackson’s life and her ability to navigate the complexities of marriage and motherhood with an ease that I have never come across. The language is also quite compelling and she doesn’t seem to sugarcoat things, preferring to keep it raw and real. She also doesn’t try to portray her husband, children and even herself in a positive light. She is simply stating the facts and how things are. It’s refreshing, at times funny, and quite relatable, even though the setting is of an entirely different time as compared to today.

The book starts off with Jackson’s family having to look for a new place to stay. Their lease is up and they are asked to move. Their finances aren’t that great and they have two small children to look after. After being shown expensive houses that are all up for sale, they finally settle on renting an old dilapidated mansion of sorts. The rent is cheap, at $50 a month, and the owner even makes a few renovations for them. The family moves and it means a lot of adjustments and modifications.

Life Among the Savages is basically a story of the domestic mundanities that set in when you have to manage a family, your finances, and various other daily activities. Jackson keeps her tone casual but there’s a looming sense of frustration. The book was apparently initially published as a series of stories in various women’s magazines and later put together in a single collection. But it doesn’t read like disjointed writings. There’s a smooth flow to it that makes you ponder about life and how some things never change.

I believe every woman must read this brilliant depiction of domestic life. It will perhaps help us understand how we can navigate our own lives better at a time when our professional lives are starting to overwhelm us, and slow living is the last thing on our minds. But men should also pick this one up because it tells you things women might not always spell out for you by giving you a glimpse of how society can set unrealistic expectations on women and how it can be burdensome.

Life Among the Savages

Shirley Jackson

Published: 1953

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Young

Pages: 229, Paperback