Sea of Tranquility
“You don’t have to be a terrible person to intentionally try to change the time line. You just have to have a moment of weakness. Really just a moment. When I say weakness, I might mean something more like humanity.”
What can be said to be a weakness in time travelers cannot be said of Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility. The novel is bursting at the seams with humanity, and it is one of the best books I have read recently.
Sea of Tranquility follows several different characters who are separated in time by centuries but connected by a single anomaly. In 1912, eighteen-year-old Edwin St. Andrew walks into a forest on Vancouver Island and inexplicably hears “notes of violin music… and then an incomprehensible sound.” In 2020, Mirella Kessler watches a concert featuring a video taken in the forests of Vancouver Island; in the video, everything goes black–and the sounds of violin music and a hydraulic whoosh are heard. In 2023, an author from the Moon, Olive Llewellyn, goes on tour on Earth following the success of her novel Marienbad, which features a character who is briefly transported into a forest while walking through a spaceport and hearing a violin. In 2401, these similarities across time are noticed, and an investigation begins.
The plot of the novel is engaging and satisfying; however, the novel shines through its beautifully written characters. This is not a science fiction novel that neglects its characters in favor of grand displays of futuristic technology and settings. Every single one of the main characters feels so real and well-developed, and I love the author’s depictions of the more “mundane” moments that do not necessarily advance the plot significantly but breathe so much life into her characters. I particularly loved Olive’s storyline. One chapter of the book is dedicated to describing her experiences and emotional struggles while on tour on Earth, and I found this chapter just as riveting–if not more riveting–than the storyline investigating the source of the anomaly. The writing has a certain coziness to it that I have trouble describing in words; it reminds me that real life is often characterized by these little moments strung together–not an epic battle between good and evil.
The novel was published in 2022, and thus, the COVID-19 pandemic is featured in the novel as well as reflections on life before and during a pandemic. This is the first novel that I have read where the pandemic is incorporated into the story, and I found myself reflecting on my own experiences in the past few years. St. John Mandel captures perfectly the loneliness and fatigue of living through a pandemic lockdown. The following passage especially resonated with me, as someone who spent the first few months of the pandemic living alone:
“I live alone,” Annabel said. “We’re not supposed to leave our houses, and it’s just…” But she was crying now, truly weeping. “I’m sorry,” Olive said. “That sounds so lonely.” She was staring out the window. The ambulance hadn’t moved. “I just haven’t been in a room with anyone in a very long time,” Annabel said.
Sea of Tranquility skillfully combines exquisitely developed characters with a compelling story, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.
Rating: 5/5
A selection of my favorite quotes (potential spoilers):
- “‘Look,’ Olive said, ‘the thing is, it’s possible to be grateful for extraordinary circumstances and simultaneously long to be with the people you love.’”
- “That night’s hotel room was white and blue. The thing with being way from her husband and daughter was that every hotel room was emptier than the one before.”
- “I’ve always loved rain, and knowing that it isn’t coming from clouds doesn’t make me love it less.”
- “Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. The arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it’s all around you with seemingly no intermediate step.”
- “This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranquil in the face of death.”