Awards give much needed exposure to authors who might otherwise not be read. But the mortifying ordeal of being known opens an author to the mortifying ordeal of being less well-received by wider audiences. Regardless of how stalwart your mind may be, it’s quite likely that the book will be perceived through the prism of “I see why this won the award” or “How could this have won an award?”

Samantha Harvey won the Booker Prize for Orbital.

Orbital is a slim volume that is not for everyone. A brief meditation on the weightlessness and gravity of humanity and existence, there is ironically — or fittingly — not much to grasp onto here. There are six astronauts, all from different backgrounds and all with different reactions to space, but they may as well be interchangeable. There are moments of poetry, but Orbital often reduces itself to sets of lists both literal and metaphorical.

If Orbital works for you, it might really work for you. But its increased audience — and I certainly don’t regret buying a copy — means that by design Orbital is going to end up in the hands of those who won’t appreciate it as well as more who will. It’s a niche work gone wide, and I wish it luck; it just didn’t do much for me.