'Best novel. The big one . . . stands above all the others' – George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones
Now an HBO Max original TV series
The New York Times Bestseller
Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award
Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction
National Book Awards Finalist
PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.
One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in North America. The world will never be the same again.
Twenty years later Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements that have grown up since the collapse. But then her newly hopeful world is threatened.
If civilization was lost, what would you preserve? And how far would you go to protect it?
- ISBN10 1447268970
- ISBN13 9781447268970
- Publish Date 1 January 2015 (first published 9 September 2014)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Pan Macmillan
- Imprint Picador
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 352
- Language English
Reviews
jamiereadthis
I could have loved the characters more— it was Frank and Miranda who got to me— and I could have loved the Hollywood parts more, but overall, I didn’t mind that the book seems intent on staying detached. It suits the subject. And it suits the people.
Kirsten and August walked mostly in silence. A deer crossed the road ahead and paused to look at them before it vanished into the trees. The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it? Perhaps humanity would simply flicker out, but Kirsten found this thought more peaceful than sad. So many species had appeared and then later vanished from this earth; what was one more? How many people were left even now?
If you needed a reason why post-apocalyptic fiction appeals to me. Done right, it lets us see what we’re not seeing, all around us. I might never fly through an airport again without seeing Station Eleven and the end of the world, and I don’t believe that’s a bad thing.
On silent afternoons in his brother’s apartment, Jeevan found himself thinking about how human the city is, how human everything is. We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points of origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and then looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines. Jeevan was standing by the window when the lights went out.
There was a stupid moment or two when he stood near the front door, flipping the light switches. On/off, on/off.
“Stop it,” Frank said. “You’re driving me crazy.”
ross91
mary
bettyehollands
inlibrisveritas
Arthur is an actor who dies on stage leaving behind several ex-wives, friend, and people who have some connection to him. 20 years after the Georgia Flu takes hold, killing most of the worlds human population, those people he’s left behind are having their stories told. I loved the back and forth narrative style that Station Eleven has. Instead of a linear story we get bits a pieces from the past of several people, some times Arthur but most of the time it’s those who knew him well or in passing. We get to see Arthur’s slow rise into stardom and his turbulent relationships, and how Kirsten and Jeevan fit into the mix and how that night changed everything.
The main theme of the story is that ‘survival is insufficient’ and I think it’s a beautiful notion to hold on to. Many of the characters carrying the past with them in some way, and those that are old enough to remember the ‘before’ try to give some of that knowledge to those who are too young or have been born into the new world. Art, music, pieces of the previous life are all things that these characters try to hold on to the most…and we get to see how that can go wrong as well. It has the beautiful literary style that helps it stick in your memory, but it doesn’t detract from the still dangerous world that these people live in. I love it when a post apocalyptic story focuses more on human nature than the actual happenings of the downfall. There is just something so poignant about reading a story where the characters are forced to rise above and seeing just how that can go so differently for each person.
The narrator, Kirsten Potter, was excellent! She had the right pacing and I found myself enjoying it quite a lot on normal speed, which is something I usually loathe doing.
Station Eleven is certainly worth the hype!
ibeforem
It also gave me some serious anxiety. I don't think it helped that I was home alone with my son and my husband was across the country when I read about people getting stranded in an airport, basically forever. I had to put the book down for a few days!
I also wish the book had ended a bit differently. There's a scene in an air traffic control tower a few chapters from the end that would have been the perfect ending, but the book continues on. The funny thing is, when I polled a few of my fellow book club members, they thought that scene *was* the end of the book! Which I think just proves my point.
But overall, I thought this was a surprisingly hopeful dystopian tale.
lisacee
adamfortuna
brokentune
Station Eleven tells the stories of a group of people who survive the end of the world and join a company of players moving from place to place, performing Shakespeare's plays.
Dark, realistic, layered, tightly written. Station Eleven should be everything I look for in a book, but somehow it did not keep me interested.