Whether or not you enjoy Sea of Tranquility is likely to be dependent on the extent you enjoyed The Glass Hotel. In many ways, Sea of Tranquility is a return to the dystopian style of Station Eleven, but it also is a partial expansion of the world created in the Glass Hotel. I was genuinely impressed with Mandel's world building, and the way she weaved seemingly random events from The Glass Hotel into the mystery of the Sea of Tranquility. I also really enjoyed the subtle dystopian shift of each distinct time period.

I was less keen on the way, it seemed to me, that Mandel overtly referenced her own experiences as a writer, and centered herself as a character in the novel. It's a personal taste, but I just don't generally think having writers as central characters makes for a particularly good story. I also wanted the mystery and resolution to be a bit more conclusive, and i felt the mystery was ultimately overshadowed by the decision to centre the writer as a main character.

Cloud-Atlas-esque novels seem to be all the rage in 2022…

“This place is precarious, that’s the only word for it. It’s the lightest sketch of civilizations, caught between the forest and the sea. He doesn’t belong here”


This is my third novel by Mandel and once again I have rather conflicting thoughts and feelings about her work. On the one hand, I recognize how talented a writer she is. Her prose has this cool yet delicate quality to it that brought to mind authors such as y, z, and even . I always found myself appreciating her subtle storytelling and her ability to make her characters retain a certain unknowability. I also find her use of imagery to be highly effective in that these motifs add a certain nostalgic atmosphere to her settings. So much so that I often read of her characters and or the landscapes which she writes of with a strong sense of Deja Vu. Maybe because Mandel often returns to the same issues or even goes so far as to refer to the same characters in seemingly unconnected/stand-alone books (a la mandel-multiverse). Here this sense of familiarity with her characters and their struggles is very fitting indeed given the story’s ‘crucial’ theme.

“[T]hese moments that had arisen one after another after another, worlds fading out so gradually that their loss was apparent only in retrospect.”


The book opens in 1912. Edwin St. Andrew is but a young English lad who after angering his father for the last time has been banished to the ‘new world’. His attempts at making a go of things in Canada don’t quite go as smoothly as he’d hoped. There are some stunning descriptions of the landscapes here and there was something about Edwin that appealed to me. There was almost an otherworldly feel to this section, partly due to the remoteness and vastness of Edwin’s new ‘home’ (i am not at all familiar with that type of environment hence my finding it surreal). This section comes to a close with Edwin witnessing something quite Other.
We then are reunited with a side character from The Glass Hotel. It’s corona-time and Mirella (Vincent’s ‘friend’) has yet to fully recover from the death of her partner and the whole Ponzi fallout. She has a girlfriend but we learn virtually nothing about her or their relationship as this section is more of an ode to Vincent. FYI, I hated Vincent in The Glass Hotel. She was the reason why I didn’t really love that book, and, understandably then, I was not particularly enthusiastic when I realized that she would play a role here as well. Even if she is not on the ‘page’, her presence saturates much of Mirella’s narrative, to the point where it struck me as a bit unfair to Mirella herself. She’s an interesting character in her own right and yet we don’t really get to focus on her. Paul, Vincent’s brother, makes an appearance but his character here didn’t strike me as particularly nuanced. It turns out that Vincent too is connected to the bizarre phenomenon witnessed by Edwin and once again the narrative makes much of her ‘art’ (*cough*banal-as-it-is). That the narrative includes Mirella unfavourably comparing her gf to Vincent was kind of a joke. It really cemented why I did not like Vincent, to begin with. I am sick of Not Like Other People type of characters.
The following section is set in the 2200s. Here we learn that some people now live on colonies on the moon, one of them is this famous author named Olive Llewellyn. She’s now on a book tour on Earth where she discusses her hit book which is, surprise surprise, about a pandemic. During her tour however Olive becomes preoccupied with the news about an actual pandemic…Olive struck me as a self-insert. There were so many lines that just came across as if they were coming from Mandel herself. Particularly the questions about what it feels like to have written a pandemic novel when there is an actual pandemic etc…I find this sort of stuff cringe and there was something slightly self-congratulatory and ‘special about Olive that just made it really hard for me to even believe in her (she was a bit of Vincent 2.0). Additionally, this section is set in the 2200s and I did not buy into it. Moon colonies aside the future envisioned here was not particularly thought out. Many inconsistencies have to do with the tech available (people still have devices?) and the way the characters spoke was just too contemporary, almost old-fashioned even (i could all too easily imagine someone saying 'old chap'). This worked for the sections before but here it was just prevented me from fully immersing myself in the events being narrated. The discussions about pandemics, epidemics, and writing about these things, were rather contrived, which again, pulled me out of the story. It turns out that Olive also is connected to the bizarre phenomenon witnessed by Edwin and Vincent.

The final section is set in the 2400s and once again the world described here did not feel particularly ‘futuristic’. While the author does include one or two details that remind us that the people from this century write and speak differently to say now, these were not enough to establish a believable setting. Anyhow, here we follow Gaspery-Jacques Roberts who is a fairly bland character. The most interesting about him is of course his name. His sister is yet another Not Like Other People type of character (there is something about Mandel’s female characters that really annoys me…). She works for this ‘mysterious’ institution and eventually, Gaspery finds himself joining her ranks. He is assigned a mission: to find out more about the anomaly connecting Edwin, Vincent, and Olive. I was hoping that we would return to the previous perspectives, such as Edwin and Mirella, but the narrative from this point onward favours Gaspery. There was a very funny lil scene about his cat, but for the most part, his story struck me as vaguely predictable. The man was bland and the moral dilemma he faces was handled in a rather simplistic and hurried way.

It would have been nice for the timelines set in the 2200s and the 2400s to be less heteronormative and gender-normative. We get a queer side character but that’s kind of it (if memory serves). There were some interesting themes at play in the book such as human connection and loneliness, empathy and choice. I appreciated the motifs that were interspersed throughout these interconnected narratives, as they consolidated the connection between these seemingly unconnected people. The conversations around pandemics were rather been-there-done-that kind of thing. I actually believe that they would have suited to an article more than this type of piece of fiction. I did find the execution to be ultimately disappointing. While the truth behind this anomaly wasn’t ‘shocking’ I did like the way it was played out. I do wish however that we could have spent more time with the characters we were introduced to early on in the book (rather than sticking to mr. boring and the cringy self-insert).
As you can probably tell by my somewhat incoherent review I feel rather conflicted about this book. Mandel’s prose is *chief’s kiss*. Her characters and her story however were a bit of a flop. I would have liked for the 'anomaly' to retain a certain mystery rather than it being explained away. I think I preferred the subtle magical realism of The Glass Hotel than the more sci-fi elements that were at play here, which were 1) not really convincing and 2) a bit sci-fi 101.

I would definitely recommend it to Mandel fans (my mother among them). If you are, like me, not entirely 'sold' on her work well, it seems unlikely that this will be the one to win you over (then again, i might be wrong here).

Interesting novel playing out over centuries, with a linking motif that is neatly explained. I admit I laughed out loud at the in book critique of a novelist’s works as being loosely connected stories that don’t effectively end - there do seem a lot about and I thought this might be one of them!

I am slightly aware that I’m reaching the “oh god, more pandemics”’ stage by now. Regardless, this is a clever, thought provoking and enjoyable tale of time, love, art and family. And pandemics, obvs.

There's something about Emily St. John Mandel's writing that is almost hypnotic: even when her narrative is jumping back and forth through time and space, it is completely effortless. Partly, I think it's because you can tell she's having fun with her writing, playing with the very concept of reality.

She has a very distinctive style: it almost feels like she's more focused on creating an engaging reading experience than an engaging and believable world. So while she utilises some brushstrokes world-building and some of the characters are very lightly sketched, it doesn't really matter because you're just swept up by the breathtaking literary concept.

Beautiful and thought-provoking without ever taking itself too seriously, Sea of Tranquility is a fresh take on speculative fiction - yet another literary marvel from Mandel.

At one point in 'Sea of Tranquility', a character jokes about being repeatedly asked "what it's like to be the author of a pandemic novel during a pandemic"; she later reveals that she's currently writing "this crazy sci-fi thing". This gives us a fairly good sense of what Emily St John Mandel is up to here, eight years on from her brilliant pre-Covid pandemic novel 'Station Eleven' which enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in 2020 and has now been turned into an HBO series.

'This crazy sci-fi thing' has many similar traits to 'Station Eleven' and to her most recent novel 'The Glass Hotel' - it also contains a richly imagined future and makes increasingly labyrinthine connections between plots unfolding in different times, as well as referencing characters in 'The Glass Hotel' (just as 'The Glass Hotel' referenced characters from 'Station Eleven'_. And as with her previous two novels, no sooner have you finished reading it than you want to go back to the beginning to appreciate all the mind-bending links in the story.

'Sea of Tranquility' contains four main narratives which gradually become interconnected; in 1912, the aristocratic younger son Edwin St. John St. Andrew is beginning a new life in Canada, where he has a strange experience in a forest; in 2020, Mirella is trying to find out what happened to her friend Vincent whose husband was incriminated in a Ponzi scheme some years before; in 2203, author Olive Llewellyn travels to Earth from the second moon colony to give a round-the-world book tour; and in 2401, Gaspery-Jacques Roberts (named after a character in Olive's book) helps his sister Zoey to investigate an anomaly in the timeline of the universe.

This five-century timespan allows Mandel once again to demonstrate her flair for world building - the future which unfolds from a very recognisable 2020 features environmental crises, a spate of pandemics, space colonisation and ultimately time travel - and it all feels totally believable. There are some definite similarities to Hanya Yanagihara's time-travelling tome 'To Paradise' published earlier this year, but this book is much slimmer - as well as being rather more fun!

This is perhaps a slighter novel than 'Station Eleven' - it maybe doesn't say anything quite so profound about human civilization, and I'm not sure that there's all that much at stake in Gaspery's mission - but there is still plenty of beautiful writing and a real sense of yearning throughout the novel. It's also just a very satisfying and straightforwardly enjoyable read. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me an ARC of 'this crazy sci-fi thing' to review!

Wow what a brilliant read sea of tranquility was. I’ve sat on this book for a few days so I can try and articulate a review together of this greatness that I’ve read. Easily one of the best reads I predict I will read in the year 2022. I don’t know what’s in my reading intuition waters (shall we say), but the books I’m picking up recently have been stellar pieces of work and like I’ve just said this one blew me away.

Emily st John Mandel is a Genius!! It has to be said the way they can write stories, tell these terrific tales is just something to be mesmerised by.

It will be hard to articulate a proper review for this one as there is so much I could say but also I shouldn’t say as its one to not know much about except its a book about the world from issues happening around the globe, global warming, catastrophes and so much more it has also got the element of time travel and a exploration on how as a collective as we go through the centuries how we treat the world and what are we doing to help it.

A brilliant brilliant read that gets all the praise and love from me!! Thought provoking, very real, puts a lot of things into perspective, mind bending and so much more.

I was surprised to find that this connected with the characters from the Glass Hotel. In many ways this felt like a natural successor to the authors previous books with its themes of time travel and the connections between characters hundreds of years apart.

She writes so beautifully, this book is definitely a worthy continuation of what came before. It immerses you in nostalgia for the future, if that's not a contradiction. There were so many sentences in this book that I wanted to hold on to, but my favorite one was: "If definite proof emerges that we're living in a simulation, the correct response to that news will be so what. A life lived in a simulation is still a life." Simply because we have all had the sensation sometimes that we are living in a dream or simulation but the book brings it home that even if this were so, the most important thing is just to live. It's a book that makes you think about what could be possible in the future and about the endless adaptability of the human race and human spirit. No surprise, just loved it.

I loved Extraordinary. Outstanding… absolutely amazing… just wow!… this book is exquisite. Absolute perfection

Emily St John Mandel's most famous novel, 'Station Eleven', was often in my mind as the Covid pandemic took hold of the world. A disturbing novel set in a fictional flu pandemic, even many years later I could still remember much of it clearly, and feel haunted by it. Her latest book is 'Sea of Tranquillity, and there's plenty of pandemics in here too, although it's not a book 'about' them as such. I'm not sure if pandemic references need a trigger warning, but certainly some readers might be keen not to think about them particularly when we're still living through one.

In this novel, Mandel takes on time travel and the nature of reality. The story centres around a strange 'anomaly' which occurred in Canada centred on an apparently ordinary maple tree in a coastal forest. For just a few seconds, a link seemed to be created between three time points, with people in the forest hearing violin music played by a busker in a futuristic airship terminal many years and miles away. Centuries later, the sinister Time Institute sends one of its investigators into the past to investigate this 'glitch'. Is the inexplicable event evidence that life is just a simulation, and this was a failure of the code behind it?

The story is told from the perspective of different people involved - those who witnessed the event or were interviewed by the investigator, and the investigator, Gaspery, himself. Mandel's writing is very easy to read and flows well, creating an absorbing and compelling story despite its underlying strange and complex concept. Mandel doesn't worry about inventing science to try to explain how the time travel works - it's a book that is set partly in the future and features some unusual technologies, but it doesn't focus on them. It simply uses these as a tools to tell a story.

The sections from the perspective of an author promoting a novel about a pandemic feel very autobiographical, and some of it made me smile - such as the questions asked by audience members. You can almost hear the weary Mandel answering the same ones in real life. Interestingly, Mandel describes the novel (which sounds very like her own 'Station Eleven') as about an 'unrealistic' flu pandemic. The references to pandemics in 'Sea of Tranquillity' feel as though they may be an attempt to rectify her 'pandemic vision' based on her (and the world's) real life experience of one. Mandel's future has clearly seen multiple pandemics, which have stifled society but not ended it, and people who endure lockdowns on a fairly regular (at least generational) basis. Which seems like a realistic prospect.

I enjoyed reading this and found it quite compelling. It's hard to pin down in retrospect but I would say its underlying message is one of humanity, and that kindness and decency come through in unexpected places and in unexpected ways. Which is a message I can get behind. It's mainly however just a good story that is well told and a bit different.

In the author’s last novel The Glass Hotel we were introduced to Vincent and her half-brother Paul and we learned of a link to a Ponzi Scheme which was to have tragic consequences. Well, we are to meet them again here. It’s not clear to what extent their back story is a pivotal element but this is one of the quirky and interesting things about Mandel’s books: she sets about things in a slightly different way to other writers I’ve come across, teasing and surprising in equal measure.

In addition to the continuing discoveries regarding Vincent and Paul we are also taken back in time to a Vancouver forest and forward to time to when lunar colonies are in place. Each segment offers up sight of a slightly puzzling event. How are these individual moments in time linked, and is there a broader significance? It’s clear from the far future view that pandemics and global warming have, to some extent, driven development and exploration. There’s a lot at play here and we haven’t even gotten to the time travel element yet.

If the first half of the book is a slow scene setter then the second half offers much more in terms of both pace and discovery. Aficionados of time travel tales will spot some of the usual tropes, but (as a reader of many such tales) I believe there’s definitely something new here, a different puzzle to solve. Mandel eschews the need for detailed breakdowns of how it’s all done, preferring instead to focus on the bigger picture and on the plight of the characters she’s introduced us to. I found this approach refreshing, I must admit. It’s a relatively short book, coming in at under three hundred pages, but there’s a good deal packed in.

If I have a grumble, it’s that I’d have liked some of the characters to have been fleshed out a little more and I thought some of the transitions in the second half of the book felt a little rushed - for instance, at one point a major character takes a controversial and determining action, seemingly without any forethought. But these are minor quibbles as I believe that once again Mandel has produced a thoughtful and compulsively readable story, one that certainly ticked a lot of boxes for me.

As a final thought, if you haven’t read The Glass Hotel don’t worry, this one works just fine as a stand-alone piece.

Wonderful, understated and totally believable narrative that is Emily St Mandel at her very best.

Such a clear and pure story with an inevitable and extremely satisfying ending.

Loved the writing, the logic and the credibility of this far-ranging story.

Thought-provoking, multi-layered and an extremely refreshing read. It completely took me out of this world and into another, even with a pandemic going on within the space(s) of the novel.

Probably my first full-on science-fiction read for a while and my very first Emily St. John Mandel – even though (confession time) I’ve had Station Eleven on my shelf and have ignored it for a long time. And for that I’m sorry because after reading Sea of Tranquility I am a new fan!

All I can say is WOW – I absolutely loved this. I’m a complete sucker for anything time-travel based and this ticked all the boxes I needed ticking.

A story that spans from the early 20th Century to the year 2401, it’s the first book I’ve read that really touches on Covid-19 but also Pandemics in general (the Spanish flu plus a future earth pandemic that proves to be even more lethal). Mixed into the pot is a tale of a strange anomoly which is appearing in numerous timezones which prompts the 25th Century “Time Institute” to start investigating what is an apparent glitch in time. And rumours are abound that “life itself” could possibly be a simulation and a software programme is bugging out.

Time travel novels are tricky – it’s the old paradox situation. Sea of Tranquility, however, is outstanding – especially as the narrative progresses and everything (eventually) makes complete sense with an ending that is truly satisfying.

There are moral dilemmas here too (I’ll try not to give too much away) as main characters face the “what-if” situation and attempt to change history for the better. I mean, what would you do if you could save someone’s life but the ripples through the rest of time were an unknown and potentially disastrous?

With touches of the TV series Fringe (a must-see if you haven’t already), a dash of The Matrix and a spoonful of Quantum Leap – Sea of Tranquility is such an amazing read with an ending to match. I read this over a few nights – it was unputdownable. Thoroughly recommended.

Sea of Tranquility is released on hardback in the UK on 28th April.

Thank you @netgalley and @panmacmillan for my review copy.

station 11 is my favourite book of all time, as everyone who has ever met me knows, and this gave all the same feelings. it's dramatic but it's told with such gentle and peaceful writing that makes you care so deeply for these characters that are spread across time, across space, and you just want them all to be okay. i loved the way pandemics are threaded through it, music, and longing and it's such a lovely book

i know i'm gushing!!! but it's time travel and pandemics and books and yearning and i've already pre-ordered the hardback

Oh I loved this book on so many levels.

Firstly I loved Station Eleven, so when COVID reared its ugly head I did wonder what Emily St John Mandel was making of it all. I was delighted to see that she had a new book, and even more excited to realise that she was tackling the pandemic in her own unique way.

So the second reason I love this book - it is Emily St John Mandel writing about pandemics, and time travel - what more could I ask for?! There is a perfect moment when one of the characters is asked what it is like to be a pandemic author in a pandemic.

Thirdly, this is a well written, superbly plotted book - it is so, so good. I was on my first flight out of the country since you-know-what - and I was more than happy to sit on a flight, in a mask, next to a stranger, for four hours because I could read this book.

Don’t be fooled by the relatively slim tome, coming in at just under 280 pages in the hardback. Emily St John Mandel crafts a world through these pages which is just half a step away from ours, over the course of hundreds of years and thousands of decisions.

We start off in the early 20th century, with a disgraced low level aristocrat from England being exiled to Canada. We jump from historical fiction then to contemporary literary fiction, as in the year 2020 we are encountering a pandemic where noone is sure where it’s going to go or how bad it’s going to be. History reflects on itself again when a couple of hundred years later, an author on a tour back to Earth from the moon is dealing with another potential pandemic. I’m making this sound complicated when in fact, it’s masterfully and elegantly drawn out.

Mandel’s writing handles big subjects deftly, even getting in a bit of a self referential dig on names in the first character we meet. Besides the genres already mentioned, she also takes in noir with a mysterious gumshoe detective popping up every now and then. Or not. Who knows?

I don’t want to spoil it for those who haven’t had the chance to read it yet, so I’m not going to go into too much more detail.

I really enjoyed this for lots of reasons, mainly that it was interesting to read! The story is looping and tight in some places and loose in others, overlapping and separating like a beautiful dance with a number of different people. Any book which centres around a piece of music, and is written so well you can hear the notes, is one I recommend.

This is due for publication on April 28th 2022, but in the meantime if you’re looking for another Mandel medium, you could get hold of the limited series episodes for another of her novels Station Eleven.

Thanks to Netgalley as always and thanks to Pan Macmillan for the DRC, much appreciated and enjoyed!

Emily St John Mandel resisted the label of SF when it was applied to her post-apocalyptic Station Eleven. This latest book’s being marketed in a way that also refuses any clear-cut debt to the SF genre, billed instead as a blend of science fiction, historical fiction and autofiction. Although it seems to me very much SF rejigged for literary-fiction audiences, in other words SF for people who don’t see themselves as SF readers. But for any hardcore SF viewer or follower, Mandel’s story treads familiar, and not especially ground-breaking, territory: revolving as it does around a rather perfunctory account of moon colonies, time travel and a mysterious anomaly repeating across time and space - albeit with the inclusion of references to more “high-brow” texts like Robbe-Grillet’s and Resnais’s Last Year in Marienbad. The Sea of Tranquillity also dabbles in well-worn questions about truth versus reality, particularly what we believe our reality to be, conjuring associations with the now-notorious ‘brain in a vat’ thought-experiment via The Matrix. In keeping with current trends, it’s also a multi-layered piece, featuring multiple timelines and characters, some recurring, deliberately harking back to Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel. Pandemics are central, and earlier storylines are revisited or reshaped, but presented in a form that removes any requirement for a working knowledge of these earlier works.

The narrative’s reasonably well-crafted at sentence level but it’s ultimately a plot-driven piece, although this isn’t entirely clear until the midpoint when a key figure’s true identity’s revealed. With the exception of the figure of Gaspery, who becomes increasingly pivotal, the characters here are thinly-sketched. Although Olive, a novelist promoting her breakout book, is clearly a version of Mandel herself, and Olive’s storylines play with representations of Mandel’s own experiences as a writer. Mandel’s depiction of Olive’s encounters while promoting her work, and the sometimes-crass expectations and judgements of fans and journalists she endures, is one of the aspects of the novel I most enjoyed. I also found Mandel’s take on living through a pandemic far less annoying than any of the other recent attempts I’ve come across. The plot itself, particularly once Gaspery’s role’s established, is fairly compelling, and there were a host of entertaining moments, but the gesture towards some level of profundity remained just that, a gesture, and the narrative shifted quite speedily towards something surprisingly conventional, with a conclusion that bordered on sentimental. Overall, though I could see this making a decent mini-series, this felt more like a stepping-stone than a fully-realised narrative in its own right, whether that’s actually the case won’t become clear until we see what Mandel comes up with next.

Emily St.John Mandel’s writing is so beautifully nuanced, quiet and understated. She makes world-building and characterisation appear so effortless. The simplicity of her storytelling concealing the richness of ideas and themes.

Having read and loved both her last two novels, I knew I was in safe hand. Nevertheless, Sea of Tranquility completely surpassed my expectations.

Investigating the idea of time, alternate timelines, and the inconsistencies, possibilities and connections between them. This is the quiet story of an author, an investigator, and a young man travelling far from home. Three characters spread across different time periods, separated by almost 500 years, yet connected by a strange anomaly.

What follows is a brilliantly strange and captivating mystery, musing on the way we each face life’s hardships and troubles - which touch us all wherever we are in time - and the universal need for love, family, connection and peace, which remains.

With hints of David Mitchell and Megan Hunter, this is gorgeously restrained and moving, a melancholy masterpiece. I loved it.

📚 r e v i e w 📚

The Sea of Tranquility- Emily St John Mandel

You know an author is special when their worlds seep under your skin and tug at your imagination long after you’ve finished their book. Its an experience I have had with the last theee books I’ve read from this author. Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel and The Sea of Tranquility arent a trilogy, they don’t follow on from each other, its something much more intuitive than that. They compliment each other, featuring just enough of a reference for you to raise an eyebrow but not so much that you feel like you’ve missed out on the punchline.
Much like the other two mentioned this is a work of genius. The almost lyrical writing style, the endearing characters that perfectly fit with their timelines… it isn’t often that you can say a book is flawless but i can say it here with confidence.

Please, if you read anything this year, let it be this.
Sea of Tranquility is released on 5th April and is available for preorder at all the usual places

Many thanks to @netgalley for the advanced copy

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