Hardcover, 272 pages
English language
Published May 4, 2022 by Knopf.
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.
Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.
When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American …
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.
Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.
When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.
A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.
Zadna hvezda nesviti na porad.
Zadna hvezda nesviti na porad.
Zadna hvezda nesviti na porad.
Krasna knizecka. Opet trosku obava z pandemicke vlozky, prezil sem. Pro fandy hard bude cestovani casem jiste usmevny. Ale proste podobne jako ve Stanici 11 je tady spousta "poezie" v pribehu. Zaokrouhluju na ctyri hvezdy.
Although the time anomaly and time travel in this book are of the standard variety the author manages to give the concept an uniqie and compelling spin. It's more about the characters that encounter the anomaly and are linked through it while they're unstuck and kind of isolated in their own time. I appreciated the inclusion of pandemics in the narrative but it's a little depressing that people don't seem to have learned from them even centuries in the future. There are some minor flaws but I liked the overall feel of the book.
I found this touching and hopeful, I liked how poignantly the characters were drawn, and the themes of kindness and the vicissitudes of life.
My main complaint was that I think the simulation theory stuff was basically an unnecessary macguffin and didn't add to the themes (at least as far as they interested me).
Content warning Slight spoiler towards the end of the paragraph
… which is Goethe and translates as "one notices the intention and is disappointed". Which is the feeling I got from reading the book: While the sections set in the early 20th century work very well, the sci-fi settings have a forced and constructed feel; while the overall story arc makes sense, the details of the construction are visible too often (how everything is about what is real and what is virtual, about connection and loneliness, and in the end really only about the experience of Covid-19); and while the idea of using time travel as a plot device, not as the main topic, is great, there are just too many inconsistencies in how it is used (sometimes things happen the way they have always done because of some cross-time intervention, sometimes such an intervention causes things to change). Overall a nice read, but not much more.
Really nice plot around time and family and friends relationships. The story evolves well and the last part and conclusion are just fantastic and pleasing. I'd love to see this on a movie, to be honest.
I liked the story of isolated humans trying to find meaning in their lives, all tangled together and touched by the miraculous. It left me feeling hopeful and reassured.
Nice short book. Nothing groundbreaking but adequately conveyed it's purpose.
a little overrated
This book washed over me. I loved the story and the way it made me feel about family, about time. The way the different stories knit together, the moments of realization that the author flawlessly sets up and executes... all of it. Lovely.
Fantastic to a point I did not expect. Very meta, and covers aspects that took me by surprise. I rarely read the descriptions of books written by authors that I have read before, and here it totally paid off. If you have read the previous two works by this author, you will like where this book takes you.
Purchasable
Purchasable
Purchasable
Purchasable
https://www.ebooks.com/en-ca/book/210334140/sea-of-tranquility/emily-st-john-mandel/.https://www.ebooks.com/en-ca/book/210334140/sea-of-tranquility/emily-st-john-mandel/.https://www.ebooks.com/en-ca/book/210334140/sea-of-tranquility/emily-st-john-mandel/.https://www.ebooks.com/en-ca/book/210334140/sea-of-tranquility/emily-st-john-mandel/.