The next narrative layer or circle lands us in 2020, which is the part of the book dealing with the characters from “The Glass Hotel” and is set in New York City (where Mandel now lives). There he has a strange experience in the forest. In “Sea of Tranquility,” these narrative connections ripple out like this: the first circle is set in 1912, when a wandering Brit at loose ends washes up on “the far edge of the Western world” (meaning Vancouver Island where Mandel was born). As in “Cloud Atlas,” we move forward and back in time, with circles radiating out from a disruptive glitch in what we perceive as reality. The classic French time-travel movie “La Jetée” is one such obvious source, as is David Mitchell’s novel “Cloud Atlas,” with its structure of nested narrative rings.
In one section, we’re even reintroduced to some of the characters from “The Glass Hotel,” though whether we’re in the same universe, multiverse or fiction franchise is debatable.Ī final set of connections is to other stories, usually of a speculative bent, that hop about different times and places. This mirrors Mandel’s own story, as her fourth book, “Station Eleven,” was also about the effects of a pandemic, launched her as a bestselling author and was later made into a cable TV series when a real pandemic broke out in 2020.Īnother connection is between “Sea of Tranquility” and two of Mandel’s previous books - “Station Eleven” and “The Glass Hotel” - which can now be seen as making up a kind of loose trilogy. In the year 2203 a real pandemic has struck and the book is being filmed, so Olive is going on a book tour to talk about it. One of the main characters, Olive Llewellyn, is a 23rd-century author whose fourth book starts gathering a lot of extra interest because its subject is a pandemic. The first is between fiction and real life. John Mandel plays an elaborate game of connections. In “Sea of Tranquility” British Columbia writer Emily St.
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