In her new novel, “Sea of Tranquility,” Emily St. John Mandel weds a sharp, ambivalent self-accounting to a speculative epic.
Mandel considers the book to be a more interesting work than “Station Eleven.” To me, the challenge she set herself—parsing the mind of afigure—seems to have attuned her to psychology generally. Where “Station Eleven” felt dreamlike, a mood piece bounded by grief, “The Glass Hotel” is nimble, undetermined, interested not just in humanity but in individual humans. The book showcases Mandel’s long-standing interest in creatives, but audiences, or the spectre of them, play a larger role.
March, 2020, was a weird month for Mandel. “The Glass Hotel” came out to glowing reviews. She was forging ahead on a project about the experience of being “Station Eleven” ’s author. And there was, of course, a third thing: a literal pandemic, less lethal than her fictional flu but fantastical in its disruptions.-19, in addition to reshaping Mandel’s day-to-day existence, amplified a tension that started with “Station Eleven,” which was climbing rapidly back up the best-seller lists.
Perched on a chair in her kitchen, Mandel cackled. “The book is objectively weird,” she said. “It’s crazy.” Then she turned serious. “I would like to believe that I’m totally immune to other people’s opinions of my work—but of course, I do want to be taken seriously as a literary novelist.” Mandel suspects that she might not have written a time-travel book without the pandemic, which inspired a “creative recklessness.
For lunch, we walked to one of Mandel’s favorite spots, a cozy bistro, in Fort Greene, that makes a cameo in “Sea of Tranquility.” Tucked into an outdoor booth, we sat on delicate, red-legged chairs and ate omelettes off a teetering table. Mandel, who radiates an alert poise, wore loose layers and clompy shoes. She struck me as genuinely warm, but also practiced at projecting her good nature.
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