Station Eleven

This book aims to take a fresh look at the apocalypse by taking the standard concept of the world-wide collapse and standing it on its head by showing a more positive perspective. In many ways, it accomplishes that by showing that after the anarchy of trying to survive society crumbling, people will get bored just “surviving”, and might crave a good show, quality music and a renewed sense of community.
That said, it does fall into some predictable post-apocalyptic story lines but I guess some stereotypes are inevitable for such a popular concept. Another unique aspect is the heavily nonlinear plot-lines; the story follows a large number of characters over a large number of years, and the story can jump from one character 20 years after the apocalypse to a completely different person 5 years before the apocalypse almost completely randomly. Personally, I have no issue with breaking chronology or following multiple characters, but this was done a lot with about 8 different characters, resulting in a lack of flow.
On one hand, that gave a neat perspective as if everything is kind of a blur of then & now, and allows one to “step back” and get a feel of the whole situation. On the other hand, I couldn't really get attached to a character or a story because there were so many of both and not enough time to say much for any of them. If the book was maybe 1000 pages, a story of 8 main characters spanning 50 years could be really powerful, but fitting that all in under 350 pages just felt kind of messy.