satyajit reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Review of 'Sea of Tranquility' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I think I will read everything Emily St John Mandel writes.
Hardcover, 272 pages
English language
Published May 4, 2022 by Knopf.
4 stars
(131 reviews)
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 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 Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American …
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 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 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.
egreiner reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Easy to read
2 stars
But a downgrade.
David H reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
A hopeful pandemic novel
4 stars
I liked the story of isolated humans trying to find meaning in their lives, all tangled together and touched by the miraculous. It left me feeling hopeful and reassured.
Jacob Harris reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Okay
4 stars
It was okay, but it made me think of a simpler Cloud Atlas. But a short and diverting enough novel to pass a few days.
Bridgman reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Review of 'Sea of Tranquility' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
[a:Emily St. John Mandel|2786093|Emily St. John Mandel|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1576606299p2/2786093.jpg]'s [b:Sea of Tranquility|58446227|Sea of Tranquility|Emily St. John Mandel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1626710416l/58446227.SX50.jpg|92408226] is a fun book to read with lots going on for such a short book (255 pages, with lots of air) that I read in just three days, which is rare for me, but don't approach it as regular sci-fi if you're big on that genre. Not much of that makes real sense.
The story relies on time travel, which I doubt will ever be possible and if it ever is it should be banned as much as possible. Once you step on that one butterfly ...
The time travel links a few plot lines, most of which make satisfying little tales on their own, especially, to me, the first one. The stories probably mesh to a greater degree than I'm aware of, but I am too dumb to get it.
I enjoyed …
[a:Emily St. John Mandel|2786093|Emily St. John Mandel|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1576606299p2/2786093.jpg]'s [b:Sea of Tranquility|58446227|Sea of Tranquility|Emily St. John Mandel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1626710416l/58446227.SX50.jpg|92408226] is a fun book to read with lots going on for such a short book (255 pages, with lots of air) that I read in just three days, which is rare for me, but don't approach it as regular sci-fi if you're big on that genre. Not much of that makes real sense.
The story relies on time travel, which I doubt will ever be possible and if it ever is it should be banned as much as possible. Once you step on that one butterfly ...
The time travel links a few plot lines, most of which make satisfying little tales on their own, especially, to me, the first one. The stories probably mesh to a greater degree than I'm aware of, but I am too dumb to get it.
I enjoyed reading it anyway.
There is clearly a lot of autobiographical stuff in here St. John Mandel packed in to get off her chest, especially an extended bit on book tours. Good reading, but I have to hope that men (mostly) won't say the idiotic things they do now in the year 2203.
Excerpt:
"I was so confused by your book," a woman in Dallas said. "There were all these strands, narratively speaking, all these characters, and I felt like I was waiting for them to connect, but they didn't, ultimately. They just ended. I was like"—she was some distance away, in the darkened audience, but Olive saw that she was miming flipping through a book and running out of pages—"I was just like, Huh? Is this book missing pages? It just ended."
PanaX reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Review of 'Sea of Tranquility' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Nice short book. Nothing groundbreaking but adequately conveyed it's purpose.
Erica Molesworth reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
meh
2 stars
a little overrated
Bo Johnson reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Like holding a mirror
4 stars
Each character this book follows has a captivating story that feels simultaneously real and relatable. The portion of the story spent in a pandemic and the conclusion made me feel seen during these times when we can feel isolated and left me hopeful and re-centered on things that matter most.
Enjoyable, even once you've guessed how it’ll all go down
4 stars
I liked it because it was well written and short. Longer would have been boring, shorter would have cut too much. I wonder how the author's experience during the pandemic influenced the Last Book Tour Before the End of the World chapter (at least one discussion in the book was real—but from 2015). I liked this book very much, but I liked Station Eleven better, hence the 4 stars.
Derek Caelin reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Incredible
5 stars
This book washed over me. I loved the story and the way it made me feel about family, about time. The way the different stories knit together, the moments of realization that the author flawlessly sets up and executes... all of it. Lovely.
ChadGayle reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Review of 'Sea of Tranquility' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Funny how the publisher of "Sea of Tranquility" goes out of their way to describe this book as anything but science fiction, which it absolutely is.
Actually, scratch that: it's not funny. It's infuriating, and it's a disservice not only to the author and to her readers but to science fiction writers who have written books with more interesting characters (and premises) than this book but who cannot be afforded the same marketing credentials as Emily St. John Mandel because she writes "literary fiction" (which, ahem, she does not, by her own admission).
Guess I shouldn't expect any better from the dried up bones of what is left of Knopf, another name in publishing that is a mere shadow of what it used to be.
Barf.
bwbeach reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Review of 'Sea of Tranquility' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I enjoyed this book. As with most time travel stories, there's an inconsistency that doesn't quite make sense. But that doesn't matter.
In this short novel, the characters are good and the interweaving of the story at different times in history is done well.
patchworkbunny reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Review of 'Sea of Tranquility' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Some lovely observations about life and pandemics. I loved how it wove in elements of The Glass Hotel. I've seen this compared to Cloud Atlas, but this actually makes sense!
altlovesbooks reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Review of 'Sea of Tranquility' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
"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 …
"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.
Rainer reviewed Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Rich in wonder and relatability
5 stars
Content warning Contains slight spoilers after 1st paragraph
Emily St. John Mandel is such an incredibly talented author and this book is richly written. The characters are intriguing and the plot will kind of blow your mind, put it back together, and then blow it again.
When Emily St. John Mandel wrote her first book about pandemics (Station Eleven), very few of us had ever lived through one. Now, we all have the experience of COVID lockdowns, being confined to career/education-by-Zoom, not seeing another human in person for weeks on end, not hugging family members for months on end...this book is highly informed by those experiences, and this author is the exact write person to write us through that shared experience (even if this pandemic is set a few hundred years in the future).
I am an Emily St. John Mandel fanboi for life.
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