Lost in Time

Emily St. John Mandel’s novels often feature a moment of disorientation — a brief shift in point of view from the third to the first person, for instance, or a quick jump in time — that unsettles a stable reality and leaves the reader suddenly adrift. Her latest work, the layered and dazzling Sea of Tranquility, doesn’t take long to reach such a juncture. It opens, like her previous book, The Glass Hotel, on a ship. This time it’s 1912, and eighteen-year-old Edwin St. John St. Andrew is headed to Canada from England after being exiled from his family.

When Edwin eventually gets to the West Coast, he goes for a walk on Vancouver Island. In a patch of dense forest, he encounters “a flash of darkness, like sudden blindness or an eclipse,” and hears the notes of a violin. He wakes up on a beach with a vague memory of having fought his way out of the trees. In a nearby...