Sea of Tranquility - Book Review

 

 

Sea of Tranquility

Emily St. John Mandel

4.5 stars

 

 

 

 

In support of a Canadian author, I grabbed this book. Emily St. John Mandel weaves the possibility of sci/fi (living on the moon) with futuristic realism (property prices decline there too) and makes it magical. Any one who can suspend belief and appreciate the possibility of time travel, human characters in different centuries all connected with the most tender of words must read this book.


I loved the description of Victoria, British Columbia (1912): It’s a far distant simulation(!) of England, a watercolour superimposed unconvincingly on the landscape.

Describing the wilderness/forest (the scene grabber for it’s future importance) - …this place is indifference. This place is utterly neutral on the question of whether he lives or dies…it hasn’t even noticed him.

We learn that Time is a continuum, so are all these wonderful characters real, are they merely pieces of each other one day after the next? Century after each other?

Mirella and Vincent (a female who at 13 radiated neglect)
Olive the homesick writer of a little girl
Gasperry and Zoey - family kinship

There's joy and sadness, rivalry and love, and a pandemic too. Futuristic ideas of holographic meetings, pixelating your face, and so many other ideas gave me many enjoyable wow-moments.

It doesn’t matter who or when, humans will be humans, as described (2401) when a 4 year old with her Dad, Ephrem sees a tombstone of another 4 year old: if her parents loved her, it would have felt like the end of the world.

What is written as separate stories become one, it is worth back-tracking to start again, once we know where we are headed. I take notes, folks, so it was wonderful to go back and re-read what I wished I’d known the first time. 

Wouldn't it be nice to do that in life?

 I will look forward to read more from Ms. St. John Mandel and I think you will too.



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