"With each sunrise nothing is diminished or lost and every single one staggers them. Every single time that blade of light cracks open and the sun explodes from it, a momentary immaculate star, then spills its light like a pail upended, and floods the earth, every time night becomes day in a matter of a minute, every time the earth dips through space like a creature diving and finds another day, day after day after day from the depth of space, a day every ninety minutes, every day brand new and of infinite supply, it staggers them."
Not much happens in this lyrical novel, except of course that the cast circle the Earth sixteen times. Set sometime in the near future (some clues it may be around five years' time) on the International Space Station, six astro/cosmonauts go about an 'ordinary' 24 hours, one in which the second personed mission to the Moon is launched, one of the astronaut's learns her mother has died, and a typhoon descends on the Philippines. The stylistic feats are dazzling: Harvey deploys lush prose to evoke wonder, and curiousity and the drive to push limits. The novel feels both constraining and unfettered in turn, the astronauts are both deeply introspective and alone in their struggles and yet tightly bonded as a crew. Despite hints of climate change, and a proliferation, this is a strangely idyllic view both of the future and of space exploration. It is, as Harvey writes it, deeply satisfying and connecting, and perhaps most of all, deeply human.