Fiction Review: Sea of Tranquility

I have become a big fan of author Emily St. John Mandel in recent years. Like many other people, I really enjoyed her novel Station Eleven. Then, this summer I read The Glass Hotel and enjoyed that novel, too. When I heard that her latest release, Sea of Tranquility, included some of the characters and settings from The Glass Hotel and that it was a time travel story, I knew I had to read it! As expected, I absolutely loved this captivating novel. My only complaint? I wish it was longer!

The novel begins with discrete sections, looking in on different characters in different time periods. In 1912, eighteen-year-old Edwin St. Andrew is exiled from his wealthy life in England to the rough wilderness of Canada, where he wanders aimlessly from the East coast to the West coast. In 2020, Mirella (a character from The Glass Hotel) attends a concert/show by the brother of her late friend, Vincent. Two hundred years later, in 2204, a novelist named Olive Llewllyn, who lives in one of the moon colonies, is traveling around Earth for a book tour. What all of these people have in common is that they all experience or witness the same strange phenomenon. Also, in each of these very different settings and time periods spanning three hundred years, they each meet a man named Gaspery Roberts.

That bare outline is all I'm going to tell you because one of the many delights of this novel is in the discovery of its secrets. Each of these stories and characters is compelling in its own way, but the way they connect is intriguing, making for a gripping narrative. I figured out the main twist pretty early on (probably because I read a lot of time travel novels), but there were still plenty of surprises in store for me toward the end of the book. It's like an intricate puzzle, where you only see the full picture at the end. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this unique novel and never wanted it to end. I can't wait to see what Mandel comes up with next!

255 pages, Alfred A. Knopf

Random House Audio

This book fits in the following 2022 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Travel the World in Books - Canada (and the moon!)

 

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Listen to a sample of the audiobook here, from Edwin's story at the start of the book, and/or download it from Audible. The audio with multiple narrators sounds great!\ 

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

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Or you can order Sea of Tranquility from Book Depository, with free shipping worldwide.