Wacky Wednesday - Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

 The Sea of Tranquility  by Emily St. John Mandel is anything but calm. 

I reviewed her book The Glass Hotel and there are some carry over characters in this new book.  The author amazes me with her very forward thinking, her twists and turns, and her writing style. 

Edwin St. Andrew is banished from his English home and sent to Canada in 1912. 

Two hundred years later, a famous writer, Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour all over Earth. She's from one of the moon colonies. 

Gaspery Roberts is a hotel detective turned time  traveler with the Institute. 

All three have something in common - the sound of a violin echoing in an airship  terminal.  

cover blurb  This is a book of art, time, love, and plague -  a virtuoso performance of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment. 

I was intrigued and  also confused at times. At the end, I nodded and had to go hmmm?  !!

Wednesday - The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel is a unique novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events - a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.  (cover blurb)

First the Hotel Caiette - a five start hotel, remote on an island off Vancouver. Vincent, an attractive young female bartender, meets her future husband, Jonathan Alkaitis under disturbing circumstances. Someone just scrawled "Why don't you swallow broken glass?" on the glass bar. 

Switch to Manhattan - retirement accounts, a Saudi  prince's fortune - Alkaitis' financial empire collapses. 

Zoom over to  cargo vessel, the Neptune Cumberland, where Vincent disappears between ports of call. 

This book moves smoothly between time, locations, and growing  troubles. 

cover blurb - Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives. 
 

I liked this book a lot. The writing is riveting,  the author truly pulls it all together,  and I said wow at the end. Plus you ultimately understand  the broken glass reference - so much is fragile in life. 

Book Review: Station Eleven

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is a different take on the future. It was named Entertainment Weekly’s top fiction book of the year, and I’m good with that. We meet Arthur Leander, a famous actor, as he has a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, former paparazzi is the EMT who tries to save him, and a child actress Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as her friend and mentor dies. Meanwhile, a horrible flu is breaking out. This is the last night of normalcy.  

Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. This nomadic troupe moves between settlements never knowing what they’ll find. Kirsten lives by a tattoo on her arm – a line from Star Trek: Because survival is insufficient.  Unfortunately, the arrival into St. Deborah by the Water finds them battling a new violent prophet. The troupe is tested and friendship, love, and the new order of family proves momentous.  

Cover blurb – Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty….Strange twists of fate connect them (Arthur, Jeevan, Kirsten, and more) all.  A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it. 

This book truly reflects on the people involved. Many still remember how things were and can tell stories -rueful scratching of the head as they think back. I enjoyed Emily St .John Mandel’s characters and the lives portrayed before the flu, and now after.   

p. 32 No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. 

Station Eleven entertains and makes one think. It’s a worthwhile way to end 2014 in the world of fiction.