Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven

by Emily St. John Mandel

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.

Reviewed by inlibrisveritas on

5 of 5 stars

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Station Eleven is one of those super hyped books that actually surprised me because of it’s substance. I tend to avoid the hype, because chances are it presents something ‘new’ but in an easy and somewhat mind-numbing way that in the end makes the story just like everything else. This is so not the case. Station Eleven is a beautifully told tale that centers around several people who in someway have a connection to a man named Arthur, who never saw the new world.

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!

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 10 August, 2015: Finished reading
  • 10 August, 2015: Reviewed