Station Eleven

After winning this years Arthur C. Clarke Award, and constantly seeing it on Goodreads, I knew I wanted to give this one a shot. I appreciate the storytelling and literary side of this book more than the characters and the story. The narrative jumps time, focusing on a world before a pandemic, then again years into the future. The focus of the story is around a traveling symphony making their way around the Great Lakes. I liked the characters and the post apocalyptic world, and especially how the characters were connected, but was distracted by the Station Eleven storyline – a comic book created by one of the characters – which didn't add much to the story for me beyond it's symbolism.

I had never heard of this book so I had no expectations. I only read it because I participate in my library's adult book club. My feelings about this book are conflicted. On one hand I liked it, but on the other I didn't. When I read the synopsis I got excited. I love dystopian/post-apocalyptic books. I feel as though I was cheated. Don't get me wrong it's beautifully written, but I think the synopsis lied to me.

This reads like a series of novellas. I hate novellas because just as soon as you get hooked on the stories/characters the stories end. That's how I would describe the timeshifting. There was one character in particular I loved from the beginning of the book, but I didn't get to read anymore about him until chapter 27. Characters I'm certain I was supposed to care about I didn't.

I love how interconnected it all was though. I just wish we could've gotten there with more plot and action. I was super disappointed by the "big" scene with the Prophet. All that build up for nothing to really happen in the end.

Not that it matters but I absolutely hate Shakespeare so I didn't enjoy those parts.

If I were describing this book I'd say it's literature meets chick lit meets dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction. I'm still glad I read it though and I can't wait to discuss it at book club next month.

I was initially confused about the decision to start a book that it is ultimately about the apocalypse with a tragic focus on the unrelated death of Arthur Leander. How can a personal tragedy be related to the apocalypse? How can we care when several million people are about to die? But ultimately that's kind of the point of Station Eleven. It's less about the apocalypse and more about everyone ever known to Arthur Leander in the peri-apocalyptic time from his first wife to the paramedic who tried to resuscitate him. It's a very character-focused exploration with some intertwining threads. The intense character study plays nicely with the themes of the book: not how humans survive the apocalypse, but really how humanity survives, with art and culture and museums and language. And in that, how individuals survive with their individuality. This is really a new approach to a pretty tired genre.

Sometimes, St. John Mandel is a little too on the nose, but it still usually hits home. For instance: the motto inscribed on the Symphony's van: “Survival is Insufficient,” or the fact that most of the characters belong to a traveling band of Shakespearean players. It really only rankled when she tried to draw parallels between Arthur having multiple wives (sequentially) being completely accepted in the conventional time line, while the prophet's, Arthur's son (in a plot-twist I saw coming on like, page 2) multiple wives are condemned, perhaps because he has them in parallel and also, a potential wife is 12. Similarly, the ironic cross-cut from Arthur's first wife bemoaning the likelihood that Kirsten will amount to nothing with her extreme competence and self-protection in the post-apocalyptic world. We get it: some people really came into their own in an apocalypse and it provides an opportunity for humanity to be cleansed. Great.

On the whole, I found Station Eleven to be a really unique and interesting take on the post-apocalyptic genre, with some beautiful character portraits.

This was marketed as a dystopia, but it's really more post-Apocalypse fiction. There's a fine line between the two – and sometimes things can straddle it – but I wouldn't call this a dystopia. So I'm a little disappointed there. Otherwise, it was good. I'm left not really sure how I should feel about it, though. I prefer books that make me feel a certain way – romances make me happy, non-fiction usually makes me feel smarter, like I've learned something, graphic novels make me nostalgic. I'm even okay with books like The Fault in Our Stars, or The Crown's Game, that left me a weeping mess. Station Eleven just left me with an “...o-kay?” Like, what am I supposed to do with this? Unlike most dystopias, I don't feel like it was a social commentary because it's post-apocalyptic. (In this case, a virus swept through and killed about 99% of Earth's population.) But at the same time, because it details events both before and after the apocalypse, I feel like it was trying to be?

The book focuses on how Arthur Leander, a famous actor, touches lives both before and after the apocalypse. It's a little ironic that it focuses so much on him since he died before it happened. Well. As it started to happen, really, but of a heart attack, not the virus. It rotates between a few different perspectives, but the one used most often is that of Kirsten, who was a child actor in Arthur's last performance. She survives the apocalypse and ends up traveling with “The Traveling Symphony,” a band of actors and musicians who travel between far-flung settlements around the Great Lakes. The name refers to a comic book drawn by Arthur's first wife. There's a dozen little coincidences in the book, leading to people who knew Arthur meeting or almost meeting, but affecting each others' lives. There are also flashbacks showing Arthur's life before the apocalypse, and how those people knew him.

I don't know. It didn't jump around as much as Oryx and Crake did, it was much easier to follow, but it just left me – meh? It wasn't a bad book, but I don't think I'd recommend it. I know other people have given it glowing reviews, so I might just be the odd person out.

See all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks

I had no idea this was about a pandemic when I started this, which was interesting to read now. The way it tells the story of the pandemic and aftermath only through the perspective of a handful of characters, including jumping around in various points in time via very subtle links from one section to the next, was really unique and kept me wondering what the next subject would be.

I've read and enjoyed a fair bit of post-apocalyptic fiction (The Road is one of my favorite books) and most of them are written in a very desperate, bleak way. There are certainly moments of that here, but the writing actually feels very tender and contemplative. Often these stories are about the protagonists holding on to the bare shreds of humanity that they have left, this book felt more about how humanity changes when all the comforts and systems that have always been there to rely on disappear and a new world must be forged. It struck me as fairly hopeful and was a bit of a breath of fresh air.

If I had to nitpick, I would say there are only two things I didn't love. One was a major villain that was a little over the top compared to the rest of the story and goes a bit against what I was talking about in the previous paragraph. The other is that all the POV characters have interesting diverse backgrounds, but their core personalities are all very similar sort of “everyman” types where they are good people trying to do the right thing even though they have flaws and regrets. I think the characters still work, but I felt the voices really weren't that distinct when the POV switched.

I was so sure I would DNF this book. It sounded like an overdone premise - world is wiped out by a plague. Ho hum. Yet, I ended up reading this book in two hours. It's rare for me to appreciate a literary novel wearing the cloak of genre fiction this way.

Most of the time, books like these are poorly executed (I am looking at you, The Passage.) pompous, pretentious and overdone.

But the beautiful writing hooked me in and then it was the characters' journeys.

There isn't much of a plot per se; instead the book is an examination of how one man affected the lives of the people around him - before and after the plague that wipes most of humanity. I was surprised by how moved I was that. Navel gazing books usually annoy me.

Selfish characters become selfless ones. Innocent people become the personification of evil.

Ultimately the lesson of this book is this: our decisions have a ripple effect. How often do we take what we have for granted until it's too late? And even if you realise that you have taken a wrong turn, sometimes it's just too late to change course because life happens. Or a plague breaks out and everyone you know dies.

I've read an awful lot of post-apocalypse, mass-extinction type novels. I'm a fan of the trope, I suppose. This novel takes that setup and tells a thoughtful story about how the world moves on and what is really necessary for humanity beyond simply survival. Definitely would recommend, particularly if you're a fan of Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy.

I loved this. Mandel has erased the lines between literature and genre fiction and used the post-apocalyptic sf staple to make observations about how we live and relate to each other in ways that catch the reader by surprise due to the unfamiliar setting. I would have liked to give it 4.5 stars. Entertaining, enjoyable, gripping, disturbing, heartbreaking and occasionally funny. This is what I read for: finding a book like this. Will be reading more of her work. Delightful

Last year I read ‘The Glass Hotel' and while I didn't love it, I liked it enough to decide to give ‘Station Eleven' a shot, considering it's reputation.

I don't regret reading this book, but that's not to say that I'm not critical of it. It was better than ‘The Glass Hotel,' which was a solid novel that had some nagging issues. Emily St. John Mandel's prose itself is great; existing in that territory where it's never in the way, clunky or overwrought, and in fact by all accounts good.

There were times where the very idea of reading this during an actual pandemic felt uncomfortable and prescient. Other times, it was bordering on tedious.

The bonds that tie this novel together are based around an actor from a weird little island in Canada. Yes, there was also a weird little island in Canada in ‘The Glass Hotel,' but whatever. Of course the author was raised on a weird little island in Canada, so there's that.

This actor turns into the “patient zero” in North America for a deadly pandemic, at least for this story's purposes, and somehow, everything is connected to him and his ex-wife Miranda's passion project comic book, Station Eleven. The comic is about Miranda's unease with the world, feeling uncomfortable and alone, with a lot of echoes of what happened in her life. After everything falls apart, a traveling symphony that performs Shakespeare as well becomes our anchor.

A part of what drags this down is almost a sense of predestination, where every character we follow is related back to dear Arthur, especially when it becomes clear about a quarter of the way through that's what we're witnessing.

That isn't to say there aren't moments of beauty in here, because there are. There are enough for me to bump this to four stars on here!

Dazzling.Much of the discourse around Station Eleven centers around the concept of a traveling performance troupe trying to preserve culture in the aftermath of the fall of humanity. That's true; indeed, it's the reason I picked up the book in the first place. But Station Eleven is much more than that. Mandel skillfully weaves in and out of storylines that take place before her fictional pandemic and at various points during it. This timeline-jumping component of the narrative has earned the book comparisons to [b:Cloud Atlas 49628 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563042852l/49628.SX50.jpg 1871423], but in truth, Mandel manages the plotwise and thematic connections between timelines much better than David Mitchell did, and she does so by staying focused and by not overplaying her hand.In spite of the inherent horror of the pandemic premise (this one's a timely read right now, during COVID-19), there is a serenity and beauty that pervades the entire novel. Plot elements can be a bit slow-going, but Mandel's world-building could not have been rushed. Her understated prose is extremely effective at immersing the reader in the world she has crafted. Even so, many motifs and allusions enrich the work. Shakespeare, Yeats, Star Trek, Sartre, and the Book of Revelation are all there.It's a bit surreal to think that this novel was published in 2014. At one point a character ponders the existence of an alternate universe in which the pandemic he lived through didn't destroy society as completely. I read this passage and realized, despite our hardships, how fortunate we are to be living in that alternate universe.A couple of minor qualms with the writing style: Mandel's insistence on referring to certain musicians by their chair in their ensemble grows grating, and I say this as a musician. Then again, there are already a lot of names to know, and perhaps she didn't want to confuse the reader further. The liberal use of sentence fragments seems welcome at times but is at other times distracting.Station Eleven very nearly reaches five-star territory for me, but not quite. Still, a magnificent work.

After winning this years Arthur C. Clarke Award, and constantly seeing it on Goodreads, I knew I wanted to give this one a shot. I appreciate the storytelling and literary side of this book more than the characters and the story. The narrative jumps time, focusing on a world before a pandemic, then again years into the future. The focus of the story is around a traveling symphony making their way around the Great Lakes. I liked the characters and the post apocalyptic world, and especially how the characters were connected, but was distracted by the Station Eleven storyline – a comic book created by one of the characters – which didn't add much to the story for me beyond it's symbolism.

It was a quick read, and I don't have any huge complaints about it. Usually stories that try to intertwine too many characters annoy me (ahem Anxious People), but I thought it wasn't forced and worked for the book. Someone could make a decent argument that there isn't a lot to differentiate any of the characters' personalities, and the author was a little heavy-handed at times instead of letting the reader make their own connections and conclusions, but honestly I didn't find myself holding it against the story.

3.5/5, would definitely recommend if you aren't looking for something light-hearted. It's not nearly as bleak as The Road but more of a downer than, say, Zombieland. Maybe on par with World War Z (the novel), but more personal characters.

I watched (and loved) the HBO show... so I was pretty nervous to read the book. Would it hold up? Would it make the show less fun? Would it be too soon to read and enjoy the book?

All of my fears were squashed almost immediately. I loved the book — and thought it only added to the show.

There were enough differences between the book and the adaptation that I stayed on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen.

But there were enough similarities that it felt like I was getting backstories on all of my beloved characters — not getting a rewrite of entirely new characters.

For anyone else who loved the show, I highly recommend the book.