BC Discussion: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

[ufcasey]

August's Book Club Discussion is about Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Below are some optional questions about the book. Feel free to just talk about your own opinions about the book in general if that's your preference.

1. Did you identify most with any of the main characters in the novel—Edwin, Mirella, Gaspery, or Olive?
2. Does the novel offer a clear explanation with regards to Vincent’s role in making the video clip from the forest?
3. If you were in Gaspery’s shoes, would you have changed the past to save Olive and help Edwin? How do you think he felt about the consequences of his decisions? Did you think he did the right thing, despite the agreements of his training?
4. If you were in Olive’s shoes, would you have gone back home at Gaspery’s warning? What suffering and gratitude did she feel from having changed her fate?
5. Both Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven and this novel deal with a global pandemic. In what ways do the two pandemics differ? In what ways are they similar? How do you think Mandel’s writing was affected by actually living through a global pandemic?

[ufcasey]

Tagging people who may have read the book:
charlatti, toepick, isabel, rupertpenny, gastro, travella, Vespasia

[charlatti]

For 3, I don’t know that it was the “right” thing, because time travel books are always clear on the idea that you can’t mess with the timeline, but I like to think I would have done the same. I don’t think he minded the consequences, especially since things ended up pretty well for him, and there was definitely a sense of him standing up to a semi-nefarious corporate entity — hard not to feel ok about that.

I think this book, having been written and published during a pandemic, feels darker than Station Eleven even though the story is not necessarily darker. Writer and reader are both so well aware of a pandemic as a real thing, not just a nifty fictional possibility.

[travella]

I gave this book 3*. I cannot remember anything about the book so I have to rely completely on my review.

This is one of those books that when you read it you know an author wrote it during the pandemic. The section about the author touring during the beginning of the pandemic I figured was taken from the author's own life and her own personal thoughts and worries during that time. This section read completely different from the other sections of the book. At that point Olive basically became the author in my mind.

This is a relatively short book. However, it seemed to take quite a while to get to the main issue, especially for such a short book. The first 100 and some pages are introducing you to the main characters from the different eras. When the main issue is revealed I found it intriguing, but I was also a little disappointed because there was only 100 or so pages left so I knew the issue wouldn't be well developed and feel rushed. My worry was valid- it was lacking, I wanted more depth at that point in the story.

It was a quick and interesting read. I cannot say I loved it, but I also cannot say I disliked it. I think another reviewer said it best when they said that the book felt more like a stepping stone than a fully realized narrative

[rootbeerfloat]

I had to refresh my memory about what happened in this book. I was most interested in Mirella's story, even though I didn't particularly enjoy The Glass Hotel.

You could tell that this book was written during a pandemic because it seemed more real, while Station Eleven was more hypothetical.

[ufcasey]

This was my goodreads book review:

"I'm not sure how I feel about this one. It's very much a 'written during the pandemic' book. It also almost requires you to have already read The Glass Hotel, and it even has a passing reference to Station Eleven. But both of those prior books are better than this one in my opinion. The plot of this book felt like a hodge podge of ideas - life in outer space, the future, life as an author, living through a pandemic, and the morality of time travel. But what really threw me off was the almost complete lack of character development. None of these characters felt 'real' to me. I will still gladly pick up future books by this author, but I can't say I would necessarily recommend this one unfortunately."