“Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel

review by MEREDITH MCKINNIE

“I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millenia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”

After a bevy of rave reviews about Emily St. John Mandel’s new speculative fiction novel Sea of Tranquility, I finally caved, and boy am I glad I did. Admittedly, novels concerning the supernatural are not my genre of choice. I prefer real-world settings and the vaguely familiar – same with films. But Mandel uses the paranormal lens to explore themes of time, the human experience, and the moral questions that keep us awake at night. This novel evoked a meditation about the generations that preceded us and those that will follow, what the world will look like, if it even still exists, and how our moral conscience might shift in another time and place.    

The book opens in 1912 as Edwin sails to another country after a falling out with his English parents. As the third son set to inherit nothing, Edwin contemplates his purpose and wanders into a forest where he experiences what he believes to be a hallucination, a blip in time accompanied by the sound of someone playing a violin. The novel then leaps to 2019 when Mirella finds out her friend Vincent is missing, a decade after the two had a falling out due to a Ponzi scheme conjured by their husbands. Next, we leap a century into the future when Olive is on a book tour promoting a recent work about the aftermath of pandemic – a timely release months before Covid-19 forces the world into isolation. Finally, Gasprey set a century beyond Olive, is contemplating his role in the world and lands at the Time Institute where he volunteers to time travel and explore the time continuum, a risky endeavor that his sister warns him against: “What you have to understand is that bureaucracy is an organism, and the prime goal of every organism is self-protection. Bureaucracy exists to protect itself.” When Gasprey faces the moral issue of changing the past and risking the future, the moral questions that simmer beneath the surface are fully realized.    

Mandel’s prose is quite readable, and each time period melds together. I thought the time lapses would prove complicated, but Mandel inserts little Easter eggs that connect the dots. She also imagines what our world and possibly other worlds might look and feel like in the future, reminding us that we are only a blip in time, much like the one Gasprey is chasing throughout the novel. Mandel’s meditation on humanity outside the confines of reality soars.    

The Canadian novelist’s previous work Station Eleven has been adapted into a limited series for HBO Max. She is also the author of six other novels including The Glass Hotel and numerous essays. Sea of Tranquility debuted on the New York Times Best Seller List. 

“If there’s pleasure in action, there’s peace in stillness.”