Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel

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⭐ 8.5/10

(Originally written by Magdalene)

This is Emily St. John Mandel's newest book, which is getting extra hype because Station Eleven was made into a TV show recently and did really well. This book had somewhat similar vibes and themes, and ESJM's trademark style.

This novel is hard to describe, because it starts with a few short stories that don't seem to be connected until you get to the middle. We have a young English man right before WWI trying to start a new life in Canada, then a woman trying to find her childhood friend in 2020, then a writer from a moon colony doing a book tour... There's space, and time travel, and pandemics (with nods to Station Eleven), and in all of these timelines people are lonely or searching for meaning, and have had strange, inexplicable experiences.

It's definitely an interesting book, and at only 250 pages, it's a surprisingly quick read despite how literary it is. Probably because I had such high expectations going on, I wasn't sure how I felt about it when I finished, but I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for a while yet.

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