Station Eleven

I could not put this book down. It is fabulously time-twisting tale of a post-apocalyptic world (I love me some post-apocalyptic worlds with or without zombies) and a few scattered lives weaving in and out of each other. The world ended in a swine flu-esque pandemic that left most of the population dead within days. Within weeks there was no electricity or running water. Within months there was no gasoline. Civilization is stripped away with brutal efficiency and those who are left find ways to survive.

There are any number of books operating off of the same trope, but what makes Station Eleven different from them is its focus not on the events but on a tattered string of characters before, during, and after the great collapse. Some of the characters we learn most about do not survive to the beginning of the apocalypse and others who are peripheral at first pick up threads and pull them through the narrative.

Mandel ties in themes both common and uncommon to these people. The first (pulling from a Star Trek: Voyager quote that makes me want to be Mandel's best friend) is “Survival is Insufficient.” We follow a Traveling Symphony that makes music and performs Shakespeare for bands of survivors. References are built in without feeling ham-fisted, and the tragedies and comedies the troupe performs serve to highlight the things that don't never change, the parts of the soul that transcend the world. She also uses a fictional graphic novel series (which I would totally read) to serve as her own play within a play. I just enjoy that graphic novels get to work alongside Shakespeare to contour the plot.

The other is the fragility and value of the world we live in now. Mandel both glorifies and questions the current age of interconnected lives and global society. We live in an age of marvels that fit in the palm of our hand, but very few appreciate it. Yet, who can argue against this interconnectivity being as dangerous as it is wondrous, a few threads snap and we all collapse, returning to hunting and gathering without so much as a database to tell us which berries are poisonous.

If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic stories, you have to read this. If you like stories that use time slip narratives to tell a story in a series of waves, you have to read this. Really just read this.