"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 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 that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world. What if it always is the end of the world?"

This story follows three timelines and involves time travel. In 1912, Edwin moves from England to a small town in British Columbia to enjoy a leisurely life on the ocean. In 2020, Olive is an author of a book about a pandemic at the same time the world is dealing with a pandemic. In 2203, Gaspery and his sister Zoey work for the Time Institute and investigate whether moments from different centuries bleed into one another.

While Station Eleven remains my favorite of her novels, Emily St. John Mandel is a genius. I hope she continues writing.

Recommended for fans of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.