La mer de la tranquillité

On prend grand plaisir à voyager avec Emily St. John Mandel. D'abord avec ce qui pourrait sembler, au premier regard, des nouvelles qui se situent à différentes époques du passé et du futur ; puis, dans un second temps, à avancer dans un récit qui fait le lien entre toutes. Les lignes de temps se croisent et s'emmêlent avec délicatesse. Le récit est rondement bien mêlé, et bien que j'aie trouvé la prose un peu trop sommaire dans les premières pages, j'ai également perçu une amélioration du style au fur et à mesure de la narration.

Was easy to read - that's what I needed at this time, and enjoyed the characters and plot. A great author.

I found this touching and hopeful, I liked how poignantly the characters were drawn, and the themes of kindness and the vicissitudes of life.

My main complaint was that I think the simulation theory stuff was basically an unnecessary macguffin and didn't add to the themes (at least as far as they interested me).

I liked the story of isolated humans trying to find meaning in their lives, all tangled together and touched by the miraculous. It left me feeling hopeful and reassured.

a little overrated

I liked it because it was well written and short. Longer would have been boring, shorter would have cut too much. I wonder how the author's experience during the pandemic influenced the Last Book Tour Before the End of the World chapter (at least one discussion in the book was real—but from 2015). I liked this book very much, but I liked Station Eleven better, hence the 4 stars.

This book washed over me. I loved the story and the way it made me feel about family, about time. The way the different stories knit together, the moments of realization that the author flawlessly sets up and executes... all of it. Lovely.

Great, imaginative story. 4.5 stars. I was completely hooked right from the start. I would recommend reading The Glass Hotel first.

A breezy, fun(ish, given some of the subject matter) read. The resolution of the book hinges, somewhat, on a twist that is revealed near the end, and I must confess that I was finding the book far more satisfying up to the point that the twist was revealed. It just felt a bit too “plotty” to me in a book that otherwise revels in nice details.

Fantastic to a point I did not expect. Very meta, and covers aspects that took me by surprise. I rarely read the descriptions of books written by authors that I have read before, and here it totally paid off. If you have read the previous two works by this author, you will like where this book takes you.