Sea of Tranquility : a novel (edizione 2022)

Although I found Mandel's Station Eleven underwhelming in terms of story, I enjoyed her prose enough that I was more than willing to give her another shot--particularly when I read the blurb for this one and it sounded far more up my alley. Unfortunately, the end result is that I now believe I likely won't pick up another book by this author in the future, as this story was even more underwhelming, albeit told in often gorgeous prose.

As best I can tell, Mandel must be getting such attention both because of her prose and because she's bringing something of an MFA sensibility to SFF genre tropes--in this case, time travel. And while I guess I can appreciate that, I read widely enough in both literary fiction and SFF that just adding a MFA sensibility to well-worn tropes isn't enough for me to be satisfied with a story. That's especially the case when it comes to a book like this, where the structure itself is so off-putting as to make engagement with particular characters and storylines more difficult than necessary. Perhaps I'd have been more impressed if I hadn't already seen similar structures employed elsewhere, but since the structure itself wasn't all that fresh, I instead found it predictable and underwhelming.

All told, I have to say that the book is more clever than enjoyable, and while the second half read far more smoothly than the first half, once it finally found its footing and stopped playing games with the reader, I simply didn't enjoy it, and was more bored than anything. No matter how much a blurb appeals to me, I don't see myself picking up another work by this author in the future. ( )

Like The Glass Hotel, an earlier book that shares several characters with this one, Sea of Tranquility is made up of a series of events that are scattered across time and seem unconnected until they gradually slip into place. Its storyline spans over several centuries and then loops back, gathering clues about a mysterious time anomaly along the way. Maybe I imagined it, but I think there's some self-reference going on in one of the characters, a little meta to go with its time travel theme. To me, it doesn’t match the depth of The Glass Hotel, which is understandable since it’s so much shorter, but it also feels a bit mechanical: well-crafted but spiritless. ( )

In Sea of Tranquility, the author describes the old unsettled America, depicts how the population has expanded in the present and speculates about future living spaces. What will always be the same? What truly changes, and who will survive? Human nature is such that there will always be some who play by the rules and others who rebel. The story starts in 1912 when Edwin, one of many characters, is exiled from England to Canada. His views on British colonization become suspect after he arrives on the east coast of Canada and gradually moves westward, ironically becoming part of colonization efforts. Additionally, he has some unusual experiences that don’t make sense until much later in the novel.

The story skips to 2020, and we meet a different set of characters and a storyline that seems current and believable until the story picks up in 2203. In the future segment, Olive Llewelyn, an author, is conducting a book tour on Earth even though she lives in a moon colony. The world is bracing for a pandemic, and the narrative starts to make sense. Later in the novel, 2401, we learn about the advantages and disadvantages of time travel and realize that moon colonies have lost their glamour. The segments of the book begin to flesh out the plot as we learn more about the results of time travel. It is well written, and through the futuristic components, I pondered questions such as:
What is real?
Is all of life a simulation?
With all of the scientific advancements, why are professional women still viewed differently from men?
Why are there still gross inequities in human populations?
Will bureaucracy always be the evil representation of the self-interest of government programs?
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Although a short book, there is a lot packed into this story! I loved Station Eleven and have The Glass Hotel still to read but couldn't resist listening to Sea of Tranquility when it became available on Libby. Very good! ( )

Another somehow wildly different book from this writer, while still keeping connections to the last two books, 'Station Eleven' and 'The Glass Hotel'. I was one of the readers who read the title page for 'Station Eleven', noticed that "time travel" was listed, and then upon closing the book said "there wasn't any time travel there". I think the explanation at the time was that the time and plot shifting was to blame for the "time travel" label... not any actual time travel. Which leaves an interesting chicken or the egg question... did readers' disappointment with no time travel in 'Station Eleven' lead to the plot of 'Sea of Tranquility' or was Emily St. John Mandel planning the time travel three books ago all along?!? I'm intrigued to know. But also, the story goes BEYOND time travel... which I will not spoil here. I read 'The Glass Hotel' recently, despite a big yawn from me initially, upon reading the description (rich criminal problems) but the book was good for what it was. I read 'The Glass Hotel' in anticipation of 'Sea of Tranquility' which sounded MUCH more like a book for me. Future book people! I figured connections would be there between all three books and THERE IS. Though I don't think you need to read all three of the books for the connections to be too important. One thing I am grateful to the pandemic for is virtual book events, and I think a book event for 'The Glass Hotel' was the first of many that I "attended" and so it's interesting that this idea seems to linger in 'Sea of Tranquility' - one of the characters is a writer promoting a book during a pandemic... in the year 2203. Overall, I wanted to love this one when I started the book. This seems simpler on a sentence level than the past two books. But it's so short it seems like the bare bones or outline of the story... not as much detail as I would have liked, especially with the amount of time and character jumping that is happening. So I would have loved if this book was more in depth. It's like light Christopher Nolan or light David Mitchell. And I wonder if the writer has ever seen a certain Terry Gilliam movie... ( )