Station Eleven

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!