Shortlisted for the 2014 National Book Awards Observer Thriller of the Month DAY ONE The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%. WEEK TWO Civilization has crumbled. YEAR TWENTY A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and he threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild. STATION ELEVEN Moving backwards and forwards in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: famous actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan - warned about the flu just in time; Arthur's first wife Miranda; Arthur's oldest friend Clark; Kirsten, a young actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed 'prophet'. Thrilling, unique and deeply moving, Emily St.
John Mandel's Station Eleven is a beautiful novel that asks questions about art and fame and about the relationships that sustain us through anything - even the end of the world.
"If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?"
I enjoyed this book for its gradual pacing and fascinating setting. Emily St. John Mandel uses beautiful, evocative imagery and the story jumps back and forth through time to make connections between characters and explore repeating ideas about loss, memory, and happenstance.
Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic story that doesn't dwell excessively on the how and why of the apocalypse. The attention is focused mainly on a network of highly coincidental character relationships surrounding the actor Arthur Leander and the fictional graphic novel Station Eleven. Each character finds their own way to cope with loss - of loved ones and of their old world.
