The sound of a violin seems to be disrupting space and time, sending a time travel agent from the far future into various eras to understand how it has happened, in Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility.
Mandel's Station Eleven is one of my favorite reads of the last few years, and her follow-up The Glass Hotel, was not its equal but worth reading as well; curiously, this volume kind of makes it a trilogy.
I was always curious why characters from Station Eleven showed up in The Glass Hotel, but in entirely different situations, including being alive when they were dead and so on. In a strangely tangential way this novel tries to explain that, by again featuring some of the same characters, with their lives changed by this ripple in time.
That being said, Sea of Tranquility can be read without the other novels as more of a meditation on the impact of random encounters, small decisions, and passing friendships on the scope of someone's life.
Again doesn't reach the heights of Station Eleven, but thoughtful and readable, and I continue to look forward to her new work.
I purchased this one and read it quickly, then passed it on to interested friends.
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