Sea of Tranquility

 
Sea of Tranquility
by Emily St John Mandel

Knopf

2022

 

 

Sea of Tranquility is a time-travel story, you realize very quickly, and also a bit of a mystery story, which emerges as you go.

 
A few years before WWI, a man goes into the forest and sees something strange, then meets an odd man who asks him about it. 

 
Then in 2020, a woman goes to a concert and sees a video of the same strange thing, and when she meets the composer after the show, the same odd man is there asking the composer about the video, and she remembers that she saw him as a child, and he looked exactly the same age.

 
Then in the 2200s, an author who grew up on the moon is giving a book tour on earth. (She's obviously a stand-in for Mandel.) Her book is about a pandemic and has just been turned into a prestigious tv show, and also a real pandemic is starting while she's on tour. And on the tour she meets an odd man who asks her about a scene from her book where something strange happens in a forest.

 
And finally, we switch to the perspective of the odd man and learn why he's investigating the strange thing in the forest. He also lives on the moon, in the 2400s, where time travel is real, and mostly used to investigate strange things in the past.

 
Mandel's writing style is very clear and spare. There's no flowery prose, and not a lot of description or speculation. Her vision of the future is hardly different from the present. The one really speculative element is her vision of future history as a series of pandemics and lock-downs, like 2020 happening over and over again, forever, surprising everyone anew each time.

 
In the 2400s, people sometimes wonder if they're living in a simulation. This provides a motivation to time travel, and also maybe seems like the reason Mandel sets part of her story on the moon, where the sky and weather are definitely simulations.

 
This isn't a fast-paced story, and there's no 'action,' but the book is a quick read. It's quite clear, calm, and straightforward, which is impressive for a time travel story. The characters are well drawn, even though the prose is spare and the worldbuilding is minimal, and I credit Mandel for saving a few unexpected surprises for the last section of the book.

 
I'm certain this won't be as famous among time-travel novels as Station Eleven is among post-apocalyptic novels, but I'm glad I read it. I think I might try her Glass Hotel next, and maybe Eleven after that.