'Sea of Tranquility' by Emily St. John Mandel

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Emily St. John Mandel has returned to speculative fiction with Sea of Tranquility. It is mostly a time travel story, but it is also a pandemic story, an author story, and a colonization of the solar system story. And it is masterful.

The book is separated into sections focusing on different main characters and time periods. The exact nature of the connections is revealed slowly, like a mystery novel giving up its clues. Melissa, Paul, and Vincent, characters from the author’s previous novel The Glass Hotel, people one section, but the rest of the characters and story are new.

The sections about an author on a book tour who left a young daughter at home reads like it could be memoir, the feelings no doubt mined from the author’s own experiences, including that it takes place at the start of a pandemic.

Callings, motivations, and living a meaningful life are all themes in the book, examined in Mandel’s clear prose. Other reviewers have pointed out a connection to Mandel’s Station Eleven as well. Now I need to re-read them all! It will be well worth it.