With Station Elevenan award-winning novel that was even made into a series by HBO (the book is much better, in our opinion), then the ethereal and mysterious The glass hotelEmily St. John Mandel once again demonstrates her fine mastery of narrative entanglements with The sea of tranquilityhis sixth novel.
Once again, different narrative threads intertwine in this fascinating novel which mixes eras, until a finale which elegantly succeeds in bringing together these countless red threads that the author extends between the different characters and timelines.
There is Edwin St. Andrew, a repudiated son who, at the beginning of the 20the century, crosses the Atlantic, finding himself disoriented in the wilds of British Columbia, where he will live a life-changing experience. Then, in 2020, Mirella learns of the death of her friend Vincent while going to the latter’s brother’s concert (two central characters of The glass hotel), which will plunge her back into agitated memories of her past. In 2203, a writer living in a lunar colony is touring Earth to promote her hugely successful book (we will undoubtedly see the alter ego of the Canadian author, who now lives in Brooklyn ), under the silent threat of yet another pandemic. Over 200 years later, an extinct man will find a reason to live while investigating an anomaly in the timeline. Inextricably, these people’s lives are linked.
The sea of tranquility is first and foremost an intimate and existentialist novel, rather than a work of science fiction, even if it evokes a futuristic world, colonies on the Moon. Yesterday or tomorrow, the concerns remain the same. Whether we are talking about a trip in time or to another continent, the action serves as a vector for reflections on the human condition, our destinies predetermined or not, these other lives that we could have, the meaning of life. existence on Earth (or on the Moon) and the place occupied by man in the universe. There is something beautiful, moving, poetic in the author’s sensitive pen, and in these characters of vibrant humanity whose contours she knows so well.
Carried by a rather slow pace, the novel ends abruptly, while all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fit together, leaving us almost unsatisfied, in suspense, eager for details that we can only imagine at our fingertips. round.
The sea of tranquility
Alto
272 pages