Station Eleven

Read as a Sword&Laser Monthly book pick.

A few quick spoiler notes:

- Jeevan get's somehow forgotten and becames less important in comparison with the other main characters. - For all the talk and fear instilled, the prophet's death was somehow anti-climatic.- I get the end of the book, leaving all things open and a possible new start of civilization (electricity grid) yet I would like to see some more development after the symphony had left the airport.

Nonetheless, besides some great chapters and thoughts about life and being human, the book does great in creating a believable post-apocalyptic world and the people living in it.

I specially like the childlessness of many conversations. By today's standards, they may even be seen as irritating. But one must bear in mind what these men and women went through and the fact they are dealing with the same people everyday. There are only so many different conversations that people can have. Maybe they've reached a point where everything that could be said was already spoken but they force themselves to talk, to maintain a sense that they're still human.

Enjoyed it. Recommend it. Can see why it won or is nominated for so many awards.

I'd like to say right off the bat that the book is very well written, the characters develop quite nicely, and I'm sure many people will enjoy the story... My problem is with the storyline itself, it just doesn't feel like a post-apocalyptic story... it spends half the time in the time prior to the apocalypse and spent very little time developing the transitional period which I believe is the most interesting part of post apocalyptic stories. And the actual post apocalyptic portion is very simple, more of a expanded short story then the novel.

It is neither dark not particularly glittery, but rather a fairly simple story set between the collapse of all civilization and 20 years later.

The killer flu is unbelievable... A simple two day enforced quarantine would have soled the problem without a collapse of civilization and could have been implemented at any point.

Sorryyy. Maybe a 1.5? I waited for my bookclub meeting to discuss it with everyone and they seemed to agree with me. This book was all over the place, switched timelines, and the character everyone revolved around was entirely unlikable. Too little too late for him to “reform” when he did.

Also, maybe I'm a terrible person but I KEPT COMPARING IT TO “THE STAND.” Terrible of me but some scenes were similar and it was so hard not to compare.

Ultimately I couldn't keep up with all the chapters changing so frequently (sometimes every 3 pages), the changing POVS, and the influx of characters in a very short timespan.

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.

This was a short, easy read that didn't really leave an impact on me. I agree with many of the reviews I've seen that discuss Station Eleven as literary fiction with a SF veneer, and I can see how that view has been reached: the SF is pretty thin on the ground here, the science is less science and more fiction. That's cool, I suspended disbelief and ran with it.

On the literary hand, however, I find it harder to get along. The two major hammers-over-the-head of Station Eleven, the comic within the book, and the Shakespeare, were as subtle as a brick. There was no nuance, no subtlety, no depth to any of the characters.

I do, however, like the world, as unbelievable as it might be (twenty years and no one's rigged up any kind of tech?). I loved the vignette of Jeevan and his brother, and to a lesser extent Clark at the airport and Air Gradia 452 and that's probably the only thing I'll take away from Station Eleven - the stories of people in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic.

Not necessarily a page turner–yet a very interesting read that covers the lives that are involved in a single moment: the death of an actor named Arthur. Each character's story is shown both before and during a deadly plague that wiped out humanity. All things are connected and we all play a part in each other's lives, even if we don't know it.

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.

Although the parallels to recent reality exist (briefly but painfully) - the story examines hope even in the darkest days - that we most feared to become real. The author really needles past and present - connecting the dots and building a beautiful narrative in such vivid detail. This is a page turner, can't recommend it enough.

Station Eleven is about a catastrophic flu epidemic that kills so many people that modern civilization comes to a stop. The epidemic and its aftermath are shown through the experiences of a group of people all connected to a famous actor, Arthur Leander, who dies of a heart attack onstage while playing King Lear the night the epidemic comes to Toronto.

I loved this book. For one thing, it is timely. For many reasons, the end of the world has been on my mind a lot lately. But I think what I really loved about it was that the story of the epidemic's aftermath is the story of pieces of the old culture surviving and perhaps being made new.

Station Eleven is going to stay with me for a while.

Maybe not for everyone, but I enjoyed this book. It's like a slice of life look into the lead up to and aftermath of an apocalyptic event. The point of view hops around a bit so it can be disorienting for people expecting linear stories, but I enjoyed piecing things together. There aren't so many characters that you lose track of what's going on, and things still seem to progress at a steady pace. It's like if The Stand had better pacing.

“If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?”

I enjoyed this book for its gradual pacing and fascinating setting. Emily St. John Mandel uses beautiful, evocative imagery and the story jumps back and forth through time to make connections between characters and explore repeating ideas about loss, memory, and happenstance.

Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic story that doesn't dwell excessively on the how and why of the apocalypse. The attention is focused mainly on a network of highly coincidental character relationships surrounding the actor Arthur Leander and the fictional graphic novel Station Eleven. Each character finds their own way to cope with loss - of loved ones and of their old world.

???Hell is the absence of the people you long for.???

A thought provoking read about a world where the majority of the population is killed by a flu epidemic. An interesting and at times disturbing view of how different people reacted to the situation and sought to survive in this “new” and radically different world. It was also interesting the different attitudes of those who were at different ages at the time of the epidemic, including those born after it. Highly recommended.

This is a disaster story. In my opinion, the story is nearly a disaster itself. The chapters abruptly jump forward and backward in time. Although most of the people on earth die, I believe that the author overestimates the negative impact this would have on humanity. It is as if any survivors lost most of their intelligence in the process. You could argue that we only get a glimpse into the lives of a few people in a small area of the world. However, it is very difficult to believe that no survivors in the world, knew enough technology to keep some communications going. An amateur radio station doesn't need much power to reach the world. Alternative power sources for radios are relatively common. Wouldn't some dictator in oil rich lands, seize upon the opportunity to conquer the world? Any number of possibilities suggest themselves - but I just can't imagine why the author wants to believe that all the survivors would be shell shocked for a couple years, and then be stuck in the technology of the middle ages.

It took me a little while to get into it, and for some reason I kept mixing up certain characters. But beyond that, I enjoyed it. I especially liked the parts that made me appreciate the little miracles of everyday technology that we either take for granted or consider nuisances. The author creates a captivating and emotional picture of the post-pandemic society.

This book has multiple perspectives and jumps around in timeline. Now it is a post-apocalypse book with few human survivors whom we follow though there's no zombies thankfully cause that totally hasn't been done to death. No, this book is a more character driven story focusing more on the thoughts inherent to losing the world you know and how sometimes we take what we have for granted.

I'd say overall I really enjoyed the story though it didn't have any insane plot twists or anything like that but was very contemplative and definitely worth a read.