Sea of Tranquility

There's a central mystery to Sea of Tranquility, although this is not what you would normally call a mystery novel. Three people who are separated by centuries experience a jarring anomaly where their moments bleed into the others: a glimpse of leafy tree branches overhead, a snatch of a violin lullaby, the whoosh of an airship taking off. We're not sure what happened, and the characters are disturbed enough by it that it becomes an important moment in the lives of those who experienced it.

The characters have other disruptions in their lives: Edwin St. Andrew has been exiled from England to Canada in 1912 because his father doesn't like his views on empire and colonialism. Mirella's husband has committed suicide because he invested heavily in a financial scheme that turned out to be a fraud perpetrated by the husband of Mirella's best friend. Olive Llewellyn is an author on tour on Earth to promote her best selling book, and missing her husband and daughter back home in their Moon Colony, just as a global (and interplanetary) pandemic begins. Finally there is Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, who is at loose ends after the end of a failed marriage when he takes up a job as a security guard at a hotel in Moon Colony Two.

I feel an atmosphere of slight melancholy in Emily St. John Mandel's novels, which along with the lovely simplicity of her writing, keeps me coming back. There is sadness in the background, and often sadness in the foreground too, but her characters keep moving forward, creating their lives.