Sea of Tranquility

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

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Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Mirella and Vincent/2020”

Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary

Mirella attends a concert. The composer is the brother of Vincent, a former friend of Mirella’s. Mirella’s husband invested in Vincent’s husband’s investment fund. When Mirella and her husband found out the fund was a Ponzi scheme, her husband killed himself and Mirella stopped talking to Vincent. The concert includes Vincent’s camera footage that the composer obtained after her death. The camera captured a maple tree, then blackness with sounds of music and ambient noise of people, like in a train station. (This scene resembles Edwin’s experience.)

Ten years later, Mirella’s new girlfriend, Louisa, tells a story about her aunt. Her aunt’s husband was cheating on her—he kept an entirely different family across the street, and the aunt only found out when the husband used the wrong credit card to pay for one child’s tuition. This causes Mirella to think that Vincent might not have known that her husband was running a Ponzi scheme. She tells Louisa about seeing Vincent once when she was bartending with a completely different look, but she didn’t talk to her. Louisa suggests that Mirella try to find Vincent.

While working at her job as a receptionist in a tile showroom, Mirella searches the internet but cannot locate Vincent on social media. She finds Vincent’s brother, the composer Paul, and waits for him after the concert by the stage door. Two men also wait for Paul; one asks Paul to get a drink, and Paul kindly invites them all along. One of the men, Gaspery, mentions something about COVID-19 but then retracts his statement, saying something about it being only January.

At a French restaurant in Brooklyn, one man compliments Paul, while Gaspery asks about the footage. Paul says it’s from Caiette, on northern Vancouver Island. The other man continues complimenting Paul and talking about art, but Mirella interrupts to ask about Vincent’s death. Paul says Vincent became a cook on a container ship and died when she fell overboard. Mirella recalls that Vincent was terrified of drowning, and she leaves the men.

In a park near the restaurant, Mirella sits on a bench. Gaspery joins her and asks if Vincent ever told her about the scene in the video. Mirella says no but thinks she has seen Gaspery before in Ohio under an overpass. Mirella leaves, walking quickly through the city, and takes a cab over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary

Mirella recalls her childhood in Ohio before she left for New York City at 16 years old. Her mother worked two jobs, so she and her older sister, Susanna, had to walk a half-mile home from a bus stop together. This walk included the underpass mentioned in the previous chapter.

One day while walking, Susanna and Mirella hear gunshots and see two men lying in the tunnel while a third with a gun sits against the wall, and the fourth runs away. Police arrive and Mirella hears the man with the gun say her name. For many years, she has been unsure if he actually said her name.

However, while riding in the cab in New York City, she is sure the man was Gaspery. Louisa texts her, asking if she’s coming to Jess’s party (an old friend of Mirella’s), and Mirella gives the cab driver a different address.

Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary

Mirella finds Louisa at the party. Mirella recalls her dead husband, Faisal, and Vincent at a different party, many years ago, standing on the same building-enclosed terrace as Louisa. She decides Gaspery couldn’t be the man she saw in Ohio because he hasn’t aged. When Louisa asks about her day, Mirella is annoyed and lies. Louisa goes to get a drink, and a fortune-teller comes outside.

While reading her palms, she asks where Mirella is from, and Mirella answers Ohio. The fortune-teller says Mirella has a secret, and they should swap secrets because they’ll never see each other again. The fortune-teller says she hates people, except for a few. Mirella says she wants to kill Vincent’s husband, Jonathan Alkaitis, or perhaps talk to him. The fortune-teller notes that these are very different things and goes back inside. Mirella goes back inside after looking at the moon, feels nothing when Louisa kisses her, and believes the relationship is over.

Part 2 Analysis

Unlike Part 1, the central character of Part 2, Mirella, does not witness the anomaly. Rather, she sees a video of it, made by Vincent, a long-lost friend. The description of the anomaly, from Mirella’s perspective, is slightly different from Edwin’s. Rather than a Rashomon effect, where multiple perspectives of an event can be radically different, the anomaly appears in a kind of repetition and variation, reflecting the music contained within it. The composer, Vincent’s brother, uses the violin notes from the video in his composition as well, another way of understanding how musical phrases can be used in variations. More specifically, the airship noise, which was completely incomprehensible to Edwin, is suggestive of “hydraulic pressure” (40) to Mirella. Living in 2020 provides her with a better understanding of technology than living in 1912, even though airships do not yet exist.

Part 2 also develops Memory and Perspective. The loss of her husband to suicide, and other related losses, causes Mirella to hesitate revisiting her past. Looking up Vincent’s brother, the composer, “required a deep dive into memory, which was a place Mirella generally tried to avoid” (45). Additionally, physical locations can trigger memories for Mirella. For instance, she is wary of an old friend’s apartment, which causes her to think: “there were dangerous places here and there, places where she could get sucked into memories of another life” (59). Mirella sought out new friends and lovers to create a different life, abandoning the people she thought contributed to her husband’s suffering. However, when she begins to doubt Vincent’s involvement in the Ponzi scheme that destroyed her husband’s financial state, Mirella must return to memories she suppressed and/or avoided.

While still mysterious, Gaspery’s role as a time traveler becomes clearer in Part 2. When he visits 2020, he makes a comment about COVID-19, which confuses people because “It’s only January” (47)—the virus was not officially named “COVID-19” until February. Later, the characters in different times are affected by different pandemics. Gaspery visited these times with the knowledge of how the pandemics will progress, while the people he encounters only know what he tells them about their fates. Mirella escapes dying from COVID-19 without any interference from Gaspery, while Edwin dies from the 1918 flu (which Gaspery cannot prevent). Olive only survives the pandemic of her time (2203) because Gaspery intervenes.