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Sea of Tranquillity | 
 enlarge | Author: Paul Russell
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 957125
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0312303726
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780312303723
ASIN: 0312303726
Publication Date: August 25, 2003
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Product Description
Paul Russell's delicately layered, richly textured novels have won him widespread acclaim as one of the finest contemporary American novelists. Sea of Tranquillity, possibly his most ambitious and rewarding novel, traces a disintegrating nuclear family across two tumultuous decades of American life - from the early '60s to the '80s - and is told in a quartet of voices: astronaut Allen Cloud, his wife, their gay son, Jonathan, and his friend/lover. Ranging in time and emotion from the optimism of the first moon shot to the dark landscape of the age of AIDS, Sea of Tranquillity is an extraordinary and compelling novel.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Awesom book September 14, 2008
if your gay or interested in the lifestyle this is the book for you....great book
Out of this world December 10, 2006
Living in Houston in 1970, astronaut Allen Cloud is training for a moon mission, his marriage is falling apart, and he discovers his teenage son, Jonathan, is gay. Jonathan is an uninhibited free spirit; he enjoys, in his neighbour's pool and the back of a pick-up tuck, the young black guy who cuts his neighbour's lawn. When Jonathan moves with his mother to Tennessee and starts at a new school he meets Stayton Voegli, shy son of a preacher and vacuum cleaner salesman, and falls in love. Eventually Stayton's father discovers their relationship and events come to a showdown. Stayton and his mother move to Turkey where they make new lives for themselves. The story shifts to 1990, Jonathan has AIDS, he returns seeking Stayton and a new and different relationship transpires, meantime Allen has his own problems resulting from a soured business deal.
I was almost deterred from reading this book by the synopsis on Amazon.com, but how glad I am that I gave it a go. It is so beautifully written, so eminently readable; the characters are so likeable, and in the case of Jonathan, even adorable. This is a captivating story that I so thoroughly enjoyed; it is warm, moving, at times very sad, but never negative. I highly recommend this book.
 An ambitious and occasionally brilliant mess September 19, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Of Paul Russell's varied and interesting novels, this is my favorite, for all of it's sprawl and contradictions. Russell handles language with great eloquence, and his sense of character development takes a great leap forward from his earlier novels.
I could identify a number of strengths and weaknesses here - on the up side, Russell's protagonist, Jonathan Cloud is one of the great creations in recent fiction, a remarkably complex and sophisticated character - both as a humanistic creation and as a mythic one. And Jonathan's parents are just as sharply drawn - the frailties of Allen (and the similarities between Allen and Jonathan) are really brought to life. And Joan Cloud is a stealthy voice of harsh truth: her inner monologue to an ex-husband, as she marinates in alcohol and the distant intimacies of others, is as devastating, and real as fiction can get.
But for the bad - I felt that Russell could've held back on some of the astronomical symbolism, and Joan's gypsy rebirth seemed - to me - to be a convenient, if somewhat mechanical plot device. The demonic preacher - father to another of the key characters here - was evocative of Robert Mitchum in "Night Of The Hunter," in a setting that really didn't call for such an extreme portrayal - I would've liked to know some of what was at the root of this character's extremity, and the depiction here left him as something of a caricature.
I also don't think Russell handles race very well at all - the main African-American character here has precious little depth, and at times lurches unnaturally from refined erudition to uncharacteristic rawness, and his dialogue rarely feels natural to the way he is described, a description which is rarely much of a progression beyond stock gay black stereotypes in the first place. Russell strikes me as a writer who should really know better, though (in fairness to Russell), I would give him a little credit for the inclusion of both racial fetishism and racism (two intricately linked phenomena) in the same narrative, which of course is vast enough for another book entirely, and is basically an unexplored, coincident development here. And though I think we've all encountered educated or upper-crust racists, certain other characters here - thankfully not very often - speak with a casual racism that again seems far beneath their education, and (more importantly) far apart from their usual take on such matters.
So...problematic for sure. Russell does succeed in crafting an expansive and imaginative narrative, and certain of his characters and their stories do soar in ways that live up to the promise of the title. Thus, I like, though I'd be hesitant to recommend without a mindful reminder that it's not a perfect work by a long shot.
-David Alston
SIMPLY A SAD STORY August 4, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
SEA OF TRANQUILITY is a novel that tells several very sad stories, stories that center around Jonathan Cloud, the gay son of astronaut Allen Cloud and Allen's first wife Joan. In the story we find that Cloud and his wife are at best estranged, have come to distain each other, and end their marriage. In the context of this event, Jonathan, a teenager, comes out, becomes an active gay boy, and becomes a pariah to his father. After the divorce, Joan and Jonathan leave Houston and go to Tennessee, Jonathan blossoms into his gay life style and meets a multitude of sex partners, as well as future long term friends Kai and Stayton (who happens to be the son of a Christian Fundamentalist preacher). As the story and Jonathan's personal epic progresses, he and his mother leave for Turkey as expatriate Americans. There they adapt and integrate themselves into the Turkish life style. Simultaneously, as Jonathan and Joan's stories are being told, so are the stories of Stayton, Kai, Astronaut Cloud, and his second wife Janine. Each of their stories is inexorably related to Jonathan's and each becomes an exercise in soul searching, self-discovery, self-delusion, and ultimately, their own personal tragedy. The only character that seems to be unscathed by his life and its eventual fate is Jonathan, who lives life with a gusto and passion. THIS IS A VERY SAD GROUP OF STORIES, and requires a degree of commitment to read, since it can be so totally heartbreaking as one reads it. Though not uplifting, the novel does teach its reader how different people cope with the life dealt to them, and how futile some human efforts truly are.
Paul Russell's most moving novel... December 10, 2004
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Much has been written about the latest two novels by Russell (War Against the Animals and The Coming Storm) but, in my opinion, Sea of Tranquillity is his best work.
I've read some of the other editorial & customer reviews and I can understand some of the criticism with regard to some of the more fantastical parts of the plot, but I believe that they are overshadowed by the beautiful, lyrical prose- aware of running the risk of sounding corny and trite, I really did feel the emotions of the characters.
Personally I loved the way Russell tells the story through four different narrators, each chapter being told by one of them. The chapters by Johnny Cloud and Stayton Voegli are amazing and complement each other by the "opposites attract" principle: Johnny's lyrical, somewhat free-form dazzling thoughts and feelings juxtaposed with Stayton's careful, at first longing and repressed conscience that evolves into love and acceptance.
Put simply, this is one of my all-time favorite books; whether "gay" or "mainstream" fiction, this book will touch you with its quiet beauty.
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