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A review by caryndi
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.0
When I picked up this book, I didn't expect it to be so similar to Station Eleven. I thought the multiple-narrators, multiple-times thing was a device Mandel used to tell her pandemic story, specifically. I guess that is just how she writes, though, because this book was done the same way. It's not a bad style, but I was expecting a different approach given the uniqueness of that approach and the fact that this was a very different story.
The construction of the novel wasn't my main gripe, though. I cannot figure out the internal logic to this book.We're introduced to an "anomaly" that takes place under a tree in Northwest Canada and an airship terminal in Kansas City (?) simultaneously, but also hundreds of years apart. We find out some time travelers from the future are investigating this anomaly, and the main investigator, Gaspary-Jacques, is warned not to change anything while traveling through time. However, he accidentally causes the glitch by being in the same place twice (sent back as a time traveler, he encounters and speaks to a version of himself who was stranded in time after interfering with the timeline).
However, this glitch existed prior to his decision to become a time traveler -- in other words, the changes he made were always going to be made before he decided to make them. But, in other instances of time travel, that is not true! The Time Institute (I think that's the name used) tracks its agents by looking at historical records before and then after their visits to other times to see if anything changed in the timeline. So, in my mind, this glitch should not have existed for them to investigate because it was a change made by Gaspary-Jacques. Maybe the idea is that since it was a "glitch" it could exist in that paradoxical way that time-travel actions do. I don't know. But my brain kept bouncing off the way things played out and because of that, I don't think the entire story holds together.
That doesn't take away from the fact that the book was very atmospheric and technically well-written. I thought it was interesting that one of the main characters was the writer of a book about a pandemic, and at least one noted plot point matched the way things happened in Station Eleven. Like a little Easter egg. And it's fun to put together the pieces you pick up from the different time settings as you read. But the way the story falls apart if I try to think about it too hard outweighs the technical proficiency, in my mind, which is why this book only gets 3 stars from me.
The construction of the novel wasn't my main gripe, though. I cannot figure out the internal logic to this book.
However, this glitch existed prior to his decision to become a time traveler -- in other words, the changes he made were always going to be made before he decided to make them. But, in other instances of time travel, that is not true! The Time Institute (I think that's the name used) tracks its agents by looking at historical records before and then after their visits to other times to see if anything changed in the timeline. So, in my mind, this glitch should not have existed for them to investigate because it was a change made by Gaspary-Jacques. Maybe the idea is that since it was a "glitch" it could exist in that paradoxical way that time-travel actions do. I don't know. But my brain kept bouncing off the way things played out and because of that, I don't think the entire story holds together.
That doesn't take away from the fact that the book was very atmospheric and technically well-written. I thought it was interesting that one of the main characters was the writer of a book about a pandemic, and at least one noted plot point matched the way things happened in Station Eleven. Like a little Easter egg. And it's fun to put together the pieces you pick up from the different time settings as you read. But the way the story falls apart if I try to think about it too hard outweighs the technical proficiency, in my mind, which is why this book only gets 3 stars from me.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Grief, Pandemic/Epidemic, Violence, and Abandonment
Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, Gun violence, and War