I ripped through it yesterday in a few hours’ time. It was so… flimsy? Like more of a too-long short story or merely an outline of an idea? It was as if Mandel just had to get something, anything to the publisher to fulfill a contract real quick. The author character made me never ever want to write a book. The characters had no depth, the concepts weren’t fleshed out, and the vision of the future wasn’t credible to me. What did everyone else think?
That really wasn’t my experience - I felt like I knew all of her characters really well, could picture them in my head and understood their motivations, and while I’m not always into heavily meta fiction, I’m really enamored with the way Sea of Tranquility responds to Station Eleven. I think you have to embrace a certain surrealist quality she has, where reading her stuff makes you feel a bit like you’re on mushrooms: Everything is, like, connected, man.
I might be in the minority, too, but I like shorter novels that don’t try to be grand epics or round out every possible detail. Like movies that are all over 2 hours now, it seems like so many books are stretching out past 400 pages. It’s just not necessary to tell a good story.
I couldn’t put this book down and thought about it A LOT for days afterward.
I see what you mean when you say embracing the surrealist quality. I felt unusually critical about this story, my brain kept yelling BUT BUT, etc. I do think she’s a great writer so I was surprised at my reaction.
I like all lengths of novels. I’ve been reading a lot of Agatha Christie lately for that short and sweet hit they give. Thanks for your thoughts!