Book Review: SEA OF TRANQUILITY by Emily St. John Mandel

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Perhaps we believe on some level that if the world were to end and be remade, if some unthinkable catastrophe were to occur, then perhaps we might be remade too, perhaps into better, more heroic, more honorable people."

I remember reading STATION ELEVEN, my first novel by this author, in January of 2020. News of a virus in China had just broken out, and we in Manila felt mildly concerned but never really thought it would wind up the way it did: upending lives, taking away loved ones who meant the world to us so it felt like losing entire worlds as well. I remember thinking how prescient this novel was, because it described a world devastated by a pandemic... but never really thought it would happen. Until it did.

I remember discussing it with a friend while we waited in our seats for a play to start (oh how I miss live performances!!), because that first novel heavily featured theatre as an art form that could survive any pandemic. I think I even talked about it in our book club, during one of our last purely face-to-face book sessions (we've switched to online/hybrid sessions since then).

And so when I had saved enough money to purchase a brand new book (inflation hits teacher salaries hard and I've been buying mostly secondhand books), I got this one. How would Mandel write about a pandemic DURING the pandemic? I wondered. And how would it differ from the pandemic novel she wrote, BEFORE the pandemic? (STATION ELEVEN came out in 2014)

As it turns out, having a shared lived experience of the past two years impacts both reader and author. We are both altered, because our common worlds have changed.

But we both belong to that hardheaded human species, one that has managed to survive tougher times, and one that is finding new ways of moving forward, still.

It reminds me of another pandemic book I read recently, Anthony Doerr's CLOUD CUCKOO LAND. Both write about the threads that bind past, present and future together. Mandel's is shorter, but I would argue that this makes for a more forceful impact on the reader, and therefore I prefer it. And also... her book has TIME TRAVEL!! Which is such a trope, but in Mandel's hands, it becomes completely believable.

Mandel's latest novel is a beautiful reflection on what our New World looks like today. And while some in positions of authority seem to think that issuing declarations are like waving magic wands, pretending that the pandemic hasn't happened (or even more foolhardy yet: that it is already OVER), books like this one invite us to take stock of what we as a civilization have learned the past two years.

We can never go back to the way things were, because everything has changed. These lessons were painfully learned, but the whole point of being human is to learn, to adapt. To pretend otherwise, borne out of economic-based fear instead of public health considerations, is irresponsible leadership at best, ignorant and callous disregard at worst.

"A life lived under a dome... is still a life," Mandel declares, with a conviction borne out of a physically embodied truth. "I had already moved too fast, too far, and wished to travel no further. I've been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately, about being a still point in the ceaseless rush."

Cheers to yet another weekend in hibernation, amid another wave. The Sea of Tranquility is not merely a physical location on the moon, and a possible future lunar colony. Mandel reminds us that we have the power to recreate this sea of tranquility within ourselves.

View all my reviews