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Sea of Tranquility

Emily St. John Mandel

Start date: March 21, 2023

Why we're reading this: Sea of Tranquility is East Side Book Discussion's April selection! This book club will be held in person …more
[close] Sea of Tranquility is East Side Book Discussion's April selection! This book club will be held in person at East Side Library on Monday, 4/17 at 2:00 PM. Visit our website or call 515-283-4152 for more details.

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Apr 21, 2022 Andy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: recommendations, best-audiobook-narrations

Mark it: “Sea of Tranquility” will become the love it or loathe it book of 2022. Its non-linear structure, sci-fi sensibilities, and ambiguous answers to questions central to the plot won’t sit right with some readers.

I was not one of those readers.

While the first quarter of the slim novel left me confused, in “Part 3: Last Book Tour on Earth,” Emily St. John Mandel started to build the world, answer (and raise questions) and provide meta Easter eggs for her fans.

The final minutes of that chap Mark it: “Sea of Tranquility” will become the love it or loathe it book of 2022. Its non-linear structure, sci-fi sensibilities, and ambiguous answers to questions central to the plot won’t sit right with some readers.

I was not one of those readers.

While the first quarter of the slim novel left me confused, in “Part 3: Last Book Tour on Earth,” Emily St. John Mandel started to build the world, answer (and raise questions) and provide meta Easter eggs for her fans.

The final minutes of that chapter propelled the rest of the story forward, and I could not put it down.

This was also thanks in part to the phenomenal full-cast narration by John Lee, Dylan Moore, Kirsten Potter and Arthur Morey. While each of them elevated the text, Potter is the standout here, rooting Olive Llewellyn in the humanity needed to care about the story.

What I appreciated about “Station Eleven” is how St. John Mandel took multiple narratives and seamlessly tied them together over time and distance. She does that here, too, but rather than a few decades it is hundreds of years of interwoven moments all framed around a single situation: a shared experience, or anomaly, of violin music in an airship terminal witnessed in 1912, the mid-1990s and the 2100s.

There was a brief moment where I felt St. John Mandel was relying too heavily on well-regarded science fiction elements - and even her previous works - but my doubts were quickly pushed aside, because this isn't a science fiction novel per se or a retread of "Station Eleven" or "The Glass Hotel," rather it's a broad in scope, yet intimate story about philosophy, connection and choice.

St. John Mandel did the right amount of world-building without detracting from the core mystery and used shared experiences effectively to help sell the more unrealistic elements of the plot. This relatability allows the reader to have fun while analyzing how much control we truly have over our fate.

She is the literary ABBA – thoughtful and kind of depressing but with a shiny gloss.

It's difficult to go into more detail about the plot without spoiling a few surprises, so if you remotely liked St. John Mandel’s previous novels, I highly recommend giving this one a try. ...more

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May 05, 2023 Courtney rated it it was amazing

"We want to believe that we're uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world."

It's as perfect as a book can be. What a treat this was to read. I don't read a ton of science fiction, but I found myself constantly wanting to pick this book up and read more. And the layers of this book, as we go through time one way and then back out. Be ...more

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Jul 17, 2022 Elizabeth rated it really liked it

Shelves: library, fiction, 2022

This novel took me a long time to decide that I really wanted to finish it - but then once I got there, I couldn't wait to keep reading. I'm not sure I felt like I could trust the ride the author wanted us as readers to go on, and I don't have a problem admitting I was wrong and the ride was worth it, but I thought it took a little too long to get satisfactorily on the road.

I thought her character work was beautiful, and I found myself invested in each character by the end of the novel. All in a ...more

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