I’m currently reading Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel. I really enjoyed her book Station Eleven, which preceded Covid by over five years. The pandemic in Station Eleven, however, resulted in almost total devastation of civilization. Aren’t you glad she wasn’t more prescient? I wonder how nervous she got in 2020 when things started heating up.
A pandemic makes a cameo appearance in Sea of Tranquility, but primarily it’s a time travel novel. I tend to love time travel plots, and this one is shaping up to be really good.
But I have a bone to pick. A pretty big bone.
In the first section, one of our characters, a second-born son from Britain who’s a troublemaker with an allowance (“remittance”)—but no hopes of an inheritance—emigrates to Canada in 1912. After spending time in Halifax and Saskatchewan, he decides to take the train farther west.
Much farther west. All the way west to Victoria, in fact. Which is on an island. And cannot be reached by train.
The Professor and I have taken three ferries to Victoria. The Washington State ferry from Port Angeles, the high-speed Clipper from Seattle, and a BC Ferry from Vancouver.
We must have missed the bridge.
