Did you read with me? All Adults Here & Sea of Tranquility

In July and August the titles for my Book a Month challenge were All Adults Here by Emily Straub and Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. I’m excited today to talk about them today. Not to jump the gun, but I liked them both.

In case you’re following along and want to read too, the next book for September is The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. I’m excited about this one. This book promises to be a good read. I mean, a group of “unorthodox” octogenerians in a retirement home get to solve their first real murder. What could be bad? I love me a good murder mystery—but a book that is also “funny,” “charming”, and “moving” [so say reviewers]? I’m all in.

(Come to think of it, The Thursday Murder Club sounds a bit like television series running right now in its second season, Murders in the Building with Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez…It’s also funny and charming—and fun.)

While I don’t intend (ever) to write book reviews for this reading project, I do like to share my thoughts on the books—and invite you to offer your thoughts in the comments below. Ideally i’d do this once a month—but as I said I’m two books behind. So I’ll be brief about each book:

First, Straub’s All Adults Here. If I were to separate all stories (books, film, television, theater—wherever stories are found) into two broad categories “Good” and “Bad”, I’d say that no matter how we like our stories—some of us love action and suspense while others of us might like comedy, the one quality overall and always that makes a story “bad” is that it fails to bring people to life.

The characters might not be believable or the writing may be so weak that we can’t find a human being in the caricature. We just can’t see real humans or ourselves in the telling.

This is not the case for All Adults Here.

Events moves quickly and it’s entertaining, but it’s the connection I felt to the characters—and ultimately the connection they form with one another—that made it such a good read. I especially came to care about Astrid, the widowed matriarch, her daughter Porter and son Elliot, now grown, and granddaughter Cecilia and her friend August/Robin—both teenagers (There were other important characters, but I think these five carry the story.)

Whether living in their first, second or final third of their lives—all of them are figuring out how to live good lives, which ultimately comes down to balance of taking care of one another, while also insisting on living life on their own terms and being true to themselves.

And of course, while community and other relationships certainly challenge us, family dynamics always put this kind of balance to the test.

I think this was my favorite quote:

“Astrid knew that she had failed, maybe not in the ways that she thought she had, but in so many ways she had never even noticed. This was the job of a parent: to fuck up, over and over again. This was the job of the child: to grow up anyway.”

I have a few criticisms. I think the way Straub introduced Astrid’s relationship with Birdie at the end of Chapter One was a bit odd. Nicky, Cecilia’s dad and brother of Porter and Elliot, wasn’t developed enough, and I thought his relationship to the others changed halfway through and therefore was somewhat unbelievable. But overall, the other characters were well-developed and it was a good book. I think I’ll check out other work by Emily Straub.

Now for Sea of Tranquilty

When I finished this book, I thought it wasn’t as impactful as Mandel’s other futuristic novel also involving a pandemic, Station Eleven, but now that I think about it—Sea of Tranquility with it’s element of time travel, might be more nuanced an thought-provoking (but overall, I’d recommend both of them!)

There are not that many main characters in this book: Poor Edwin St. John of 1912-18, Mirella of early 2000s, who had a female friend named Vincent, author Olive Llewellyn of 2203 from Moon Colony 2, and then there is Gaspery Jacque “Roberts” from the same moon colony as Olive, but from the year 2401—and his sister Zoey, Arborist friend Epherem and “that Alexander girl” Talia.

What is interesting of course is how the lives of all these people not so much intermingle—as how their lives are similarly impacted, I think. That’s about all I can really say that will make any sense if you haven’t read the book. All of the characters have to deal with strange occurrences they can’t explain, the trials of their eras in time—which includes a pandemic in Olive’s time—and then ultimately, as all humans, they must make choices.

I think Mandel does a great job unfolding the story from one character to the next and then, in the second half of the book, surprising the reader with how the plot connects in unpredictable ways. The book is really well crafted—and as Mimi said about the book, the future Mandel depicts here is probably more believable then the one Jennifer Egan creates in The Candy House (June’s book). Which is ironic because Candy House was set entirely on earth.

I enjoyed the exploration of the Simulation Hypothesis (which I did not know is an idea in the real world) and also Mandel’s comments on the pandemic and the general anxiety of our time. And I’ll leave us with a quote from this book too:

“…I think as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world…

“But all of this raises an interesting question,” Olive said.

“What if it always is the end of the world?” Before her the holographic audience was almost perfectly still. “Because we might reasonably think of the end of the world,” Olive said, “as a continuous and never-ending process.”

That feels true to me.