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| A photo of me and my new friend, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel |
Hi. My name is Bobby Keniston, and my only friends are books. This isn't such a bad thing. There are many dashes in the "Pro" column, in fact. Books don't have to stay away from you during a pandemic, for one thing, right? No nasal swabbing a book before you can invite them to your party or to share your home...
My newest friend I want to talk about today is Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. Mandel has blown up on the literary scene, especially since her fourth novel, 2014's Station Eleven was a finalist for the National Book Award and a recipient of the Arthur C. Clarke award. Station Eleven, which centers around a pandemic, has been discussed widely again these last few years (wonder why?) and has been made into a critically-acclaimed limited series for HBO Max. Mandel's most recent novel was The Glass Hotel, one of my favorite novels of 2020, which centers around a Ponzi scheme and a kind of ghost story.
Before I get into many details about Sea of Tranquility, my new pal, I should start by saying that Emily St. John Mandel is quickly becoming one of my favorite novelists, along with the likes of Jesmyn Ward, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Neil Gaiman. True, I have only The Glass Hotel and my new friend, but both novels are just that good.
HOW I MET MY NEW FRIEND
As I mentioned above, I read Emily St. John Mandel's previous novel, The Glass Hotel, back in 2020. I picked that book up at the Thompson Free Library. It became such a good friend, that I anxiously looked forward Mandel's next book, and, well, here it is. I purchased a copy, and have since ordered Station Eleven as well. It is my intention now to go back and get her first three novels, too.
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND
Sea of Tranquility doesn't have an easy "elevator pitch," as Mandel has said herself in an interview. But here is a basic rundown:
Sea of Tranquility goes through different time periods, beginning with 1912, where we follow Edwin St. John St. Andrew (yes, a young man with two saints in his name) who ends up "exiled" after anti-colonial remarks at a dinner party to the forests of Canada in the fictional Caiette (also seen in The Glass Hotel). It is here that the young man has a strange experience in the forest, as if being transported and surrounded by violin music. He also meets a mysterious man pretending to be a priest who calls himself Roberts.
Next, Mandel transports us to 2020 for a section called Mirella and Vincent who were both characters in The Glass Hotel ( don't worry--- you don't have to read The Glass Hotel to understand this book, though I do highly recommend it just the same). Mirella's husband was a victim of Vincent's husband's Ponzi scheme and lost everything. Vincent disappeared years ago, and Mirella wants to know what happened to her, so she goes to a concert being held by Vincent's brother Paul. Paul shows an old video tape of a strange occurrence videotaped by Vincent when they were children. It is a brief moment, and very similar to what happened to Edwin in 1912. After the concert Mirella meets with Paul, who is also being spoken to by a strange man named Gaspery. But Mirella seems to remember Gaspery from somewhere...
From here, we can (literally) fly to the moon when we meet Olive Llewelyn in the year 2203, a writer on a book tour, currently on Earth. Olive lives in the second colony on the moon, and is overwhelmed a bit by the tour, missing her husband Dion and their young daughter Sylvie. Olive wrote a very successful novel about a pandemic and may be close to finding herself in a very real pandemic of her own. After meeting a "journalist" by the name of Gaspery Roberts, named after a character from her book, she wonders if it may not be wiser to cut the book tour short.
And this brings us to the very heart and crux of the book, which is why I don't really want to say anything more. Clearly, Gaspery is the unifying character of these three threads in time.
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT MY NEW FRIEND
Sea of Tranquility packs the richness of an epic into 255 quick-turning pages. Mandel is skillful at weaving plot threads into a beautiful tapestry--- so skilled, in fact, that I find myself succumbing to this completely unoriginal metaphor. But I'm not the great writer, here. That would be Emily St. John Mandel.
Everyone is talking how this is Mandel's most speculative fiction to date, and while that may be true, it is still, at its core, a very human story and one we can all relate to, especially now.
Olive Llewelyn, the writer, while not a complete stand in for Mandel, was clearly written with a deep knowledge of what it is like to be a successful writer of a pandemic novel who is now living during a pandemic. These insights are some of the most poignant in the book.
"I suppose anything written this year is likely to be deranged," a character says of a piece being written during the pandemic lockdown. I am sure Mandel said the same thing time and again, but make no mistake--- Sea of Tranquility is only deranged in the most relatable way for those of us who have survived 2020 and 2021. This novel could not or would not have been written without the pandemic, at least not in the way it is given to us now.
I suppose we can chalk that up to a little bit of bright side.
FINAL TAKEAWAY
Enough of this. Just go get the book.
Thanks for reading my thoughts on my new friend, Sea of Tranquility. Come on back when I make a new friend!
