#32: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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.

#27: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

A decades-old Ponzi scheme collapses, throwing many lives into chaos, from a fading painter to an addicted performance artist to a cargo shipping manager to a bartender turned rich man's girlfriend and more; a woman jumping from a cargo ship, and a message scrawled on a swank hotel's window, bracket the narrative and tie all the storylines together in Emily St. John Mandel's The Glass Hotel.

I recommended Mandel's Station Eleven to everyone a few years ago, and find this follow-up also a literate, rewarding novel for any reader.  Attached to the spine of the story are many interweaving narratives, which showcase, more than anything else, how chance happenstance and random meetings can resonate through a person's life.

There is a magical element to the narrative too, with ghosts--perhaps brought on by guilt and strong memories, perhaps not--and an exploration of alternate histories core parts of the story.  

In fact, careful readers will see several characters from Station Eleven here, positioning the novel as an alternate history version of Station Eleven, in an odd way.   Odd especially in that her previous novel is about a pandemic that wipes out a lot of the population, and this one reflects on what might have happened if that pandemic had been contained.

A worthwhile read that I was looking forward to.  I bought this from Amazon and read it quickly.

#5: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

A Hollywood actor on the wane dies of a heart attack on stage during a performance of King Lear in Toronto; that very night, patient zero of a devastating flu virus lands at the airport.  How these events intersect, and reverberate for decades to come, is the crux of Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven.

This is a tremendous read with toes dipped in both the pulp and literary pools.  On the one hand, we have the life of the fading Hollywood actor, surrounded by a constellation of ex-wives, estranged kids, and fallen friendships; meanwhile, twenty-five years distant, the ragged survivors of the deadly flu criss-cross a devastated landscape bringing culture to small outposts with performances of Shakespeare and music.  When this band of artists cross a sociopathic cult leader they have to rely on more than monologues, with tragic results.

It seems as if every year I find a book I would recommend to anyone who enjoys reading, and so far for 2015 it is Station Eleven.  A very strong outing and recommended.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it quickly.