Station Eleven

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.