Andrew Smith's Reviews > Sea of Tranquility

In the author’s last novel The Glass Hotel we were introduced to Vincent and her half-brother Paul and we learned of a link to a Ponzi Scheme which was to have tragic consequences. Well, we are to meet them again here. It’s not clear to what extent their back story is a pivotal element but this is one of the quirky and interesting things about Mandel’s books: she sets about things in a slightly different way to other writers I’ve come across, teasing and surprising in equal measure.

In addition to the continuing discoveries regarding Vincent and Paul we are also taken back in time to a Vancouver forest and forward to time to when lunar colonies are in place. Each segment offers up sight of a slightly puzzling event. How are these individual moments in time linked, and is there a broader significance? It’s clear from the far future view that pandemics and global warming have, to some extent, driven development and exploration. There’s a lot at play here and we haven’t even gotten to the time travel element yet.

If the first half of the book is a slow scene setter then the second half offers much more in terms of both pace and discovery. Aficionados of time travel tales will spot some of the usual tropes, but (as a reader of many such tales) I believe there’s definitely something new here, a different puzzle to solve. Mandel eschews the need for detailed breakdowns of how it’s all done, preferring instead to focus on the bigger picture and on the plight of the characters she’s introduced us to. I found this approach refreshing, I must admit. It’s a relatively short book, coming in at under three hundred pages, but there’s a good deal packed in.

If I have a grumble, it’s that I’d have liked some of the characters to have been fleshed out a little more and I thought some of the transitions in the second half of the book felt a little rushed - for instance, at one point a major character takes a controversial and determining action, seemingly without any forethought. But these are minor quibbles as I believe that once again Mandel has produced a thoughtful and compulsively readable story, one that certainly ticked a lot of boxes for me.

As a final thought, if you haven’t read The Glass Hotel don’t worry, this one works just fine as a stand-alone piece.

My thanks to Pan Macmillan, Picador for providing a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.