Sea of Tranquility

A comfortable top ten read, if not candidate for novel of the year. Emily St. John Mandel continues to develop as an author, and this work matches Station Eleven as her best so far. In both novels there are commonalities: pandemics that can change history, and the ability for art (music here, theatre in Station Eleven) to transcend calamity. To best describe Sea of Tranquility take the best of Emily St. John Mandel and merge it with David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things. It is testament to her skills as an author that St. John Mandel seems as comfortable writing about hierarchical Edwardian families as she is imagining worlds on space over 200 years from now. The notion of characters that can time travel, or at least “appear” in different eras is not new. Neither the author's conception here nor her take on sci-fi is original per se, but the quality of the writing elevates all else. St. John Mandel has assembled in a short format (little more than 200 pages) a prose that is deft, captivating and emotional. I found myself wiping my eyes on occasions and marvelling at the literary origami assembled here by the author. If Sea of Tranquility is dystopian (foretelling possible future disaster), it is also infused with optimism. I did not see the plot twist or wrinkle of time (in time - read to understand) coming at all. 10/10.

By Emily St. John Mandel