"This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranquil in the face of death."

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, many people turned to Mandel's [b:Station Eleven|20170404|Station Eleven|Emily St. John Mandel|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1451446835l/20170404._SX50_SY75_.jpg|28098716], a novel published in 2014 and already a bestseller and loved by many adoring fans, hunting for clues on how people handle pandemics. I didn't get to it until 2018 — which means that I had arrived late to the party, but also that I still felt the aftereffects of Station Eleven lingering in my mind by the time March 2020 rolled around.

Instead I went in search of authors who were contemporaries of the 1918 flu pandemic — I wanted to see how they managed to weave it into their worlds — how it had affected them and how they purged themselves of their experiences. Especially when we all suddenly realized the timeline of devastation these people had endured. The impact of this resonated even more when experiencing our own pandemic. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than World War I — many who fought in the Great War and survived, only to die of this terrible plague. We knew this, and we also knew right after came the Roaring Twenties...a time of excess and frivolity. But suddenly this wild and chaotic approach to life (coupled with other sweet amenities like suffrage and not-so-sweet ones like prohibition), made more sense. And I wanted to read about it.

But there is a startlingly sad lack of contemporary accounts of the flu pandemic in fiction for that time. I read [b:One of Ours|543137|One of Ours|Willa Cather|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349072170l/543137._SY75_.jpg|2205446], but I believe the mention of the flu outbreak is so quick that if your attention wanders for a second, you might miss it. I read the Smithsonian Magazine article, "Why Did So Few Novels Tackle the 1918 Pandemic," which was published in 2017, and which makes mention of brief passages in other works ([b:Look Homeward, Angel|12448|Look Homeward, Angel|Thomas Wolfe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388247436l/12448._SY75_.jpg|1156378], [b:They Came Like Swallows|125192|They Came Like Swallows|William Maxwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1171896467l/125192._SY75_.jpg|529693], and [b:Pale Horse, Pale Rider|672222|Pale Horse, Pale Rider|Katherine Anne Porter|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1390387162l/672222._SX50_.jpg|1113733]). But still nothing that seemed to center around the flu that shook the world.

And it makes me so uncertain and not just a little concerned with how authors currently living will handle their responsibility to account for these times. So I was glad to hear that there seem to be so many coming — lockdown having done its job on many fronts — and though I hear the occasional cry of how a reader isn't ready to read about the pandemic while we're still in it, I hope they understand that they absolutely don't have to read it. Books are not just for the now, they are (one hopes) for posterity.

Now, while Mandel's Sea of Tranquility doesn't quite do this (I mean, we already have Station Eleven from her...she can't do it all single-handedly)— I think what it does do is deliver that unifying melody of humanity. There's an immediacy that builds throughout the quiet hum of Mandel's words, focusing on connection and communication. Her writing is beautiful, with an underlying gentle lilting that carries the reader through each individual portion of the story.

The novel opens in 1912 and touches down on the timeline at another six points: 1918, 1990, 2008, 2020, 2203, and 2401 — sometimes for only a breath, and others for longer moments. The connection between them all centers around the people who have been impacted by a weirdly disconcerting experience — many directly connected to a particular location in British Columbia.

"—into a flash of darkness, like sudden blindness or an eclipse. . . . an impression of being in some vast interior, something like a train station or a cathedral, and there are notes of violin music, there are other people around. . . and then an incomprehensible sound—"

As a lover of time-travel and speculative fiction, this was a brilliant combination — and though I suspected the thing to suspect all along — I adored the way Mandel tied up all the loose ends that needed tying. Her overlapping and underlayment of the various points and cast of characters had such a wonderful balance to it.

Mandel writes like she's breathing music into the words and story. The style and tempo press forward, and the simple structure creates a sense of harmony and peace as the sweeping melody of time and place take control and bring you along. The effect is that of a marrying of improvisation and composition, chaos and order. Just like in Station Eleven, Mandel reassures us that there is calm to be found, beauty to witness, and consolation that many of us, in the end, will do what's right.