Name: Jaden Nelson's review of Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Item: Sea of Tranquility
Rating: 3
Author: Jaden Nelson

Emily St. John Mandel

A novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.'

A Novel

Sea of Tranquility

Santa

There’s a low-level, specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones.

The award-winning author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel returns with a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment. Sea of Tranquility is virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful. Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from English polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal - an experience that shocks him to his core. Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: the exiled son of an aristocrat driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe. PRAISE FOR SEA OF TRANQUILITY 'I could write a thousand words about Emily St. John Mandel, and this book, and this moment but I won't dare spoil it. Truly soul-affirming.' Emma Straub 'A spiraling, transportive triumph of storytelling-sci-fi with soul.' Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies 'A complicated and mysterious puzzle concerning the nature of reality solved perfectly, all loose ends connected... Even more boldly imagined than Station Eleven. Exciting to read, relevant, and satisfying.' - Kirkus Reviews

Robyn Harley

“Think of how holograms and virtual reality have evolved, even just in the past few years. If we can run fairly convincing simulations of reality now, think of what those simulations will be like in a century or two. The idea with the simulation hypothesis is, we can’t rule out the possibility that all of reality is a simulation”

morgan

if definitive proof emerges that we're living in a simulation, the correct response to that news will be 

A life lived in a simulation is still a life.

[...] we turn to postapocalyptic fiction not because we're drawn to disaster, per se, but because we're drawn to what we imagine might come next. We long secretly for a world with less technology in it. 

I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we're living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we're uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that 

, after all these millennia of false alarms, 

 is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world. But all this raises an interesting questions. What if it always is the end of the world? Because we might reasonably think of the end of the world as a continuous and never-ending process.

One person suggested to me that [the interest in postapocalyptic literature] had to do with economic inequality, that in a world that can seem fundamentally unfair, perhaps we long to just blow everything up and start over. 

Someone sugggested to me that it has to do with a secret longing for heroism, which I found interesting. Perhaps we believe on some level that if the world were to end and be remade, if some unthinkable catastrophe were to occur, then perhaps we might be remade too, perhaps into better, more heroic, more honorable people. 

Some people have suggested to me that it's about the catastrophes on Earth, [...] the tragedy of being forced to abandon entire countries due to rising water or rising heat, but that doesn't ring true to me. Our anxiety is warranted, and it's not unreasonable to suggest that we might channel that anxiety into fiction, but the problem with that theory is, our anxiety isn't new. When have we ever believed that the world wasn't ending?

There's a low-level, specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones.

[...] maybe the death really was too casual, in the way he went from perfect health to death over the course of a paragraph and the story kept moving without him but on the other hand, isn't that reality? Won't most of us die in fairly unclimactic ways, our passing unremarked by almost everyone, our deaths becoming plot points in the narratives of the people around us? But obviously 

 was fiction, i.e., reality wasn't relevant to the question at hand, and maybe the death of the prophet really was a flaw.

You know the phrase I keep thinking about? 'The chickens are coming home to roost.' Because it's never good chickens. It's never 'You've been a good person and now your chickens are coming home to roost.' It's always bad chickens.

Emiley Jones

In those streets everyone moved faster than me, but what they didn't know was that I had already moved too fast, too far, and wished to travel no further. I've been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately, about being a still point in the ceaseless rush.

This is what the Time Institute never understood: if definitive proof emerges that we're living in a simulation, the correct response to that news will be “So what.” A life lived in a simulation is still a life.

—and my point is, there's always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we're living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we're uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world."

She never dwelt on my lapses, and I couldn't entirely parse why this made me feel so awful. There's a low-level, specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones.

She'd seen five of those tattoos, but that didn't make it less extraordinary, seeing the way fiction can bleed into the world and leave a mark on someone's skin.

…but there's something to be said for unplanned cities. Colony Two was soothing in its symmetry and its order. Sometimes order can be relentless.

He begins buying flowers every few days, which he places on his dresser in a cheap vase. He spends a long time gazing at them. He wishes he were an artist, to draw them and in so doing to see them more clearly.

horu

There's a low-level, specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your ioved ones. 

I hadn't been successful at very many things, but I'd always been good at watching. That was how I knew my ex-wife had fallen in love with somneone else, just by being attentive. 

Naomi J.

Because of that ancient horror, too embarrassingly irrational to be articulated aloud: If you say the name of the thing you fear, might you attract that thing’s attention? This is difficult to admit, but in those early weeks we were vague about our fears, because saying the word “pandemic” might bend the pandemic towards us… Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. They arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away, and then it’s all around you, with seemingly no intermediate step.

But on the other hand, isn’t that reality? Won’t most of us die in fairly unclimactic ways, our passing unremarked by almost everyone, our deaths becoming plot points in the narratives of the people around us? 

The award-winning author of Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel returns with a wondrous novel of time travel that precisely captures the reality of our current moment. Sea of Tranquility is a virtuoso performance and an enormously exciting offering from one of our most remarkable writers. In 1912, eighteen-year-old Edwin St. Andrew crosses the Atlantic, exiled from English polite society. In British Columbia, he enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and for a split second all is darkness, the notes of a violin echoing unnaturally through the air. The experience shocks him to his core. Two centuries later Olive Llewelyn, a famous writer, is traveling all over Earth, far away from her home in the second moon colony. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him. When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in time, he uncovers a series of lives upended: the exiled son of an aristocrat driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe. Sea of Tranquility is a novel that investigates the idea of parallel worlds and possibilities, that plays with the very line along which time should run. Perceptive and poignant about art, and love, and what we must do to survive, it is incredibly compelling.

Lucy Newlinds

This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranguil in the face of death

“Perhaps we believe on some level that if the world were to end and be remade, if some unthinkable catastrophe were to occur, then perhaps we might be remade too, into better, more heroic, more honourable people”

Lindsay

Genesis (@whisperingchapters)

Jaden Nelson

3.5 stars. I think this was a really interesting and imaginative idea, but it also didn't leave me with any profound feelings, so 3.5 it is.

"The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from an island off Vancouver in 1912 to a dark colony of the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and planets"--

Caroline

This is a beautiful book that parallels how much I loved her first book. There are so many passages that you could come back to that give one such hope and joy about being alive. Also an inventive novel that ties to all the stress and confusion we felt about covid but without bringing you back exactly to that time. My favourite part was the acknowledgment that life is worth living and celebrating in whatever circumstance you may live in.

Hannah Yang

“When have we ever believed that the world wasn’t ending? [...] Perhaps we believe on some level that if the world were to end and be remade, if some unthinkable catastrophe were to occur, then perhaps we might be remade too, perhaps into better, more heroic, more honorable people.”

If I could describe Sea of Tranquility in one word, it would be 'exquisite.'

This feels so different from other novels I've read. It's almost like a philosophical thought experiment disguised as a mystery, where the 'solve' is that it doesn't matter whether or not the initial question is answered. Though it is a time travel book, it also doesn't stylistically feel sci-fi. At first, the structure feels like disconnected short stories, but they come together at the end into one surprisingly simple story.

A lot of the things that typically feel important to a novel (ex: character development) didn't play as much a role here; for example, we don't really get to 'know' any of the characters introduced in depth besides Gaspery Roberts (and maybe Olive Llewellyn). Don't get me wrong, there is plot happening all the time - Mirella's and Vincent's story, fleshed out, could merit a book of its own - and some interesting world-building with the various moon colonies, but ultimately, the 'realness' (for lack of a better word) of their stories and experiences is what matters most.

Mandel's writing is poetic but straightforward and the whole book is extremely readable; I finished the whole thing in 2 hours. There are definitely moments where it's obvious that this book was written during the pandemic (the one time I felt taken out of the story was when a character mentions COVID), but overall, this was simply lovely.

“If definitive proof emerges that we’re living in a simulation, the correct response to that news will be So what. A life lived in a simulation is still a life.”

It hooked me, and a read half of the book with the pleasure of being transported by a skillful writer. Then I realized there wasn’t going to be anything deep in there. As most american entertainment, it is all surface. Its only goal is to offer a temporary distraction. I kept going even though I had lost interest in the plot. Then it resolves, following the fad of the moment: the unsurprising reveal, a big obligatory BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING. Ugh. The story collapses on itself and little is left after the quiet implosion. I can’t imagine I’ll remember any of it in a few weeks. 

Martin Maugeais

A favourite this year. I have to read « the glass hôtel » now! 

Barbara

khwaiish 

while the main idea/concept was amazing, the pacing of the book ruined what could have been an outstanding plot twist. 

This book reeled me in SO quickly, the cover is simply beautiful and the way Emily writes is so satisfying. The concept of this book is nothing like I’ve ever read and I was completely and utterly immersed, whenever I was reading this book I would forget about everything around me…. I mean WOW! This book is my new favourite, if I could rate it ⭐️6 I would !!

This book blew my mind and now I can’t form words. This was so clever and hypnotising and you need to read it. I’m not usually a sci-fi fan but this book has me doubting myself. 

Beth Bartholomew

What I liked: Interesting concept of stories across centuries somehow being connected. Reminded me of Cloud Atlas. Also, great writing. 

What is missing for me: I didn't really get to connect with the characters. Not much character development. Also the pace was off, nearly 100 pages in I was bored and unsure whether to keep reading. Then a lot of things happened a bit too quickly in the next 100 pages. 

Omar Fernandez

What I liked: Interesting concept of stories across centuries somehow being connected. Reminded me of Cloud Atlas. Also, great writing. 

What is missing for me: I didn't really get to connect with the characters. Not much character development. Also the pace was off, nearly 100 pages in I was bored and unsure whether to keep reading. Then a lot of things happened a bit too quickly in the next 100 pages. 



Petaco

Not for me. I should have stopped reading after I quit twice before. I found that I did not care for any of the characters and could not make myself care.

'So wise, so graceful, so rich. I loved Sea of Tranquility' - Naomi Alderman, author of The Power From the award-winning author of Station Eleven Who could you sacrifice to protect the future? Lives separated by time and space have collided, and an exiled Englishman, a writer trapped far from home, and a girl destined to die too young, have each glimpsed a world that is not their own. Travelling through the centuries, between colonies on the moon and an ever-changing Earth, together their lives will solve a mystery that will make you question everything you thought you knew to be true. 'A spiralling, transportive triumph - sci-fi with soul' - Kiran Millwood Hargrave 'Emily St. John Mandel remains an instant-buy writer' - Glamour 'Ingenious, hugely ambitious and beguiling' - Guardian

Lorraine

I need to admit, that although I have already read Station Eleven by this author and loved it, that the reason I chose this one was the beautiful cover and edges!

Like Station Eleven it is well written and very enjoyable. It’s quite a short book and set in different places/times. It tells a story about space and time travel and reality being a simulation.

I loved how the characters and their lives were interconnected and how they were all tied together at the end.

It’s sad, it’s sweet, it’s thought provoking. It’s an escape from reality. 

From the cover to the story inside, it is beautiful, a perfect little package.

“No stars burn forever.”

Lisa Lindquist 

altlovesbooks

"I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we're living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we're uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that now, after all the millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world."

I don't normally use long quotes like that, but it felt especially poignant today, now, this year. Things are bad, but they will always be bad, have always been bad, in different but similar ways. 

This was an incredibly enjoyable time travel book. I won't summarize the plot since I think a lot of the joy is figuring this one out for yourself, but in general, a future man tries to stop a future thing from happening. 

It's got a bit of a slow start where you wonder where things are going, but once things pick up, they really pick up. It's a short book (comparatively speaking) anyway, so when things start moving rapidly, it's incredibly satisfying coming to realizations and seeing where things are going. I especially loved all the references to Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, and I think there was some fourth wall breaking at one point which was funny to me.

An easy add to my favorites this year. If you liked her previous books, definitely pick this up.

Danny Werhane

“Bureaucracy is an organism, and the prime goal of all organisms is self protection. Bureaucracy exist to protect itself.” 

I’ve been wanting to read one of this authors book for years, so I was thrilled when Sea of Tranquility was chosen for a bookclub August pick. 
The book is divided into four different stories, spanning from 1912 to 2200. They all connect in very small ways-and then eventually a time travel aspect comes in to play. It was a very unique spin on the typical time travel story and it really caught me off guard. This is one those books that definitely isn’t for everyone, as it takes a while to get the point across. Regardless of the slow begging, I was intrigued by all the stories in their own way. Once everything makes sense, it’s mind blowing. The writing creates a very eerie atmosphere through the whole book, despite the fact that nothing that high stakes is happening at first. If you are looking for a fast read with a unique narrative style, I would definitely recommend this! Plus, there is a cat named Marvin.

A novel written in a pandemic about a novel written about a pandemic by an author who has to live through a pandemic. Also a tale about a temporal paradox but played sort of backwards as the consequences of the paradox are explored before the circumstances of the paradox are crafted. Mandel has a facility with prose that sees it slide effortlessly by like silk chiffon, while at the same creating a set of vignettes and moments populated by a cast of characters who are fallible and imperfect but entirely understandable, complex but treated by the author with kindness and generosity. There are moments of trauma and these are felt, as well as read. The tragedy of living and dying in a pandemic are shown in sharp and painful relief. 

David Burrows

Jovana Gjekanovikj 

Fernando Bolaños

Michaella 

Wow...
My brain has been altered and I don't know what to do about that

Adeline

If I had to describe this book in just one word, it would be satisfying. I don’t read much contemporary fiction at the moment but this I devoured this book. While I did guess the ending, I so enjoyed reading how all the pieces came together at the end. It felt like unraveling a slinky that’d been caught on itself. St. John Mandel writes with simple prose, but I think it really lends itself to the story, letting the concepts speak for themselves. Would recommend!

Katie Allard

I really enjoyed it; it was too short though. 

Meghan

Boothby

Could easily have been a gimmick--the interlocking stories across several times periods that are all connected somehow is something we've seen before--but it definitely isn't. Instead, fascinating choices. Lays down a premise with cosmic questions, but then manages to strip away any bombast revealing a quiet, deeply human story. 

Read it if you want to crack open a true puzzle box, but will be satisfied with a small, heartfelt payoff that's more about recognition than discovery 

Great imagery in any time period:
Slouching around in the Canadian wilderness & drawing 
Moon domes
Weirdcore home videos set to music
The night city

Irene Laochaisri

Had the potential to be brilliant had the author taken more time (pun intended) to carefully flesh out each of the protagonists. The pace never felt right: the slow build in the first half transformed very quickly into a rushed unfolding of how the pieces of the narrative are meant to connect. Still, the book kept me intrigued throughout. I applaud the author's ambition.

Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel