Sea of Tranquility (2022) by Emily St. John Mandel

Book Review

Sea of Tranquility (2022)

by Emily St. John Mandel

    Welp, Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel is surely over the hump, heading towards a long career in the upper echelons of the Anglo-American world of literary fiction, based on the critical and audience success of the HBO Max version of her 2014 novel, Station Eleven.  I've managed to not finish the book version of Station Eleven, the Audiobook version of Station Eleven AND the television show, so I wouldn't characterize myself as a fan, but like always I'm interested in the intersection of literary fiction and science fiction themes, and therefore Sea of Tranquility, Mandel's new book, which is both a time travel caper novel AND a sequel to her well received 2020 novel The Glass Hotel (prestige TV version on the way!)

    In fact, I actually went out to my local Barnes & Nobel and bought the hardback, which I mildly regret because Sea of Tranquility clocks in at barely 200 pages (with large margins, blank pages between chapters, and chapters that are under fifty words each.)  I tried to savor the experience but there is no way I could have taken longer than two hours to read this bad boy.  The short length probably bodes well for the potential audience size- I picked my copy off a stack that was on the official Barnes & Noble book club table, and it makes sense.  Sea of Tranquility actually reminded me of a science fiction novella written by someone like Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov, but of course written by a contemporary author of literary fiction.    As you might expect there isn't much "hard" science fiction where the characters spend pages of exposition describing various impossibilities (like time travel) to the reader.

  I think St. John Mandel deserves credit for writing a time travel caper book when the obvious trend has been towards alternate histories and parallel universes, retro and brave at the same time, her choice, I would say.