He wants to redefine himself in a faraway land, but it’s a seemingly pointless trip. Sea of Tranquility opens on a would-be British colonizer named Edwin St. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. The past isn’t just prologue, it’s the present and future, too.

If Mandel were a musician, it would be an album made from sampling earlier songs. Instead, though, Mandel asks for the opposite: Sea of Tranquility, her latest novel, is a discursive tale looped directly atop its predecessors, cutting them up and rearranging the pieces into a trippy, wistful story. It’d be understandable if she hoped readers might push past triumphs out of their minds when appraising her next offering. (Another HBO Max show is in the works.) With so much recent success, any new Mandel work faces high expectations. Mandel’s moody follow-up novel, The Glass Hotel, wasn’t quite as zeitgeist-ensnaring as Station Eleven, but it was still a warmly received best seller. A story about the survivors of a fictional flu pandemic, it gained new relevancy in 2020-the word “prescient” got tossed around a lot-and the next year, HBO Max released a lush, acclaimed limited series adaptation. It went on to be the kind of breakout critical and commercial hit that transforms a writer’s life. John Mandel published her fourth novel, Station Eleven.

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