Sea of Tranquility TP

In 1912, Edwin, the third son of a wealthy British family who is sent into exile for his progressive views, has a transcendent experience in the remote Canadian woods when he is momentarily transported to a futuristic airship terminal and hears a violinist playing. Nearly a hundred years later, Vincent Smith (the heroine in Mandel's previous novel, The Glass Hotel, 2020) has a similar experience as a teen. And several centuries into the future, a resident of a colony on the moon named Gaspery Roberts is sent back through time to investigate these incidents, and discover how and why they happened. Connecting characters across the centuries--including several others from The Glass Hotel, plus a writer, who, not unlike Mandel herself, has written an eerily prescient hit novel about a fictional pandemic just before the onset of a real one--Mandel spins a gripping and beautiful narrative that speaks to how we are all interconnected in great and small ways. With more than a few discoveries related to her previous novels, this will be a delight for longtime Mandel readers; but those new to her work won't find themselves lost by any means, except in the sense that all readers will be subsumed by this gorgeously rendered, deeply intimate, conceptually rich, and affecting tale. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Mandel continues to reign as a cutting-edge, best-selling novelist, and the themes of this deeply involving tale promise even more attention and acclaim.