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Loading... Station Eleven: A Novel (National Book Award Finalist) (edition 2015)by Emily St. John Mandel (Author)
Work InformationStation Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
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I adored this book! The fact that I read it on a cruise, with the Mediterranean as my backdrop, made the entire experience even more special. Every moment with this novel was captivating. I drank it all in eagerly--from the engaging characters to the intricately woven story. The narrative is multifaceted without being confusing. Mandel skilfully handles the jumps back and forth between the past and the post-apocalyptic present, as seen through the eyes of her diverse cast of characters. Despite the complexity, though, everything fits together seamlessly, and the impact in the end is profound. Mandel’s writing is stunning. Her descriptions are vivid and her characters feel real. I devoured each page and couldn’t help but hug the book to my chest when I finished. What I loved most about this ambitious and emotional novel was how much it made me reflect on my everyday life, and the things I take for granted. The themes of love, loss, friendship, and the power of memory are explored in such a beautiful way here. My first foray into Emily St. John Mandel's work was a lovely surprise, and I can't wait to read more by this author. A flu decimates the world’s population. This book is a pretty realistic description of what happens next, which we can all imagine from our own experiences when Covid-19 came along. It follows multiple characters and how their lives intertwine despite the inoperable modern communications and transportation, as infrastructure breaks down for decades. I appreciated how storyline about the “bad guy” was resolved and the hint of hope at the end. An excellent read. So glad I decided to keep reading books by this author after my disappointment with The Last Night in Montreal. I’ve put The Glass House on my tbr list.
Station Eleven is not so much about apocalypse as about memory and loss, nostalgia and yearning; the effort of art to deepen our fleeting impressions of the world and bolster our solitude. Mandel evokes the weary feeling of life slipping away, for Arthur as an individual and then writ large upon the entire world. Survival may indeed be insufficient, but does it follow that our love of art can save us? If “Station Eleven” reveals little insight into the effects of extreme terror and misery on humanity, it offers comfort and hope to those who believe, or want to believe, that doomsday can be survived, that in spite of everything people will remain good at heart, and that when they start building a new world they will want what was best about the old. Mandel’s solid writing and magnetic narrative make for a strong combination in what should be a breakout novel. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time-from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains-this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it. No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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The primary thread of the story follows Kirsten fifteen years later, as she and the other actors and musicians who make up The Travelling Symphony journey through coastal southwest Michigan. Small communities have sprung up along the shores of the Great Lakes, and the ragtag crew that makes up the Symphony continually loop around them, performing, taking their inspiration from a line from Star Trek: "survival is insufficient". The group is excited to return to one particular town, where one of their members left them to settle down, but when they arrive they find their friend gone and things much changed. The town is now controlled by a cult leader known as The Prophet. When a stowaway pops up after the troupe has fled, trouble follows.
There are a lot of time jumps in this book. So much so that it seems almost unfair to call it entirely a post-apocalyptic novel, since a decent chunk of the narrative actually takes place before the flu hits. It goes from Kirsten in her present, to Arthur in his early years, to an interview taking place after the flu but before the principal timeline, and so on and so forth. It sounds confusing, but the way that Mandel writes it it's actually pretty easy to follow. It's a tricky thing to pull off, a narrative that moves around in time as much as hers does, but Mandel is a talented writer and, for my money, makes the emotional impact even stronger by doing it.
This is a wonderful book, y'all. Not only does Mandel handle her narrative masterfully, she also draws characters that resonate. You care about them, even knowing that some of them are going to meet their end when the virus happens. It's not a book like The Road about despair and sorrow. It's a book about people, and the connections that are made and fractured between them. There are certainly dark moments, but the atmosphere she creates is overall one of poignancy and bittersweetness. I loved reading it and am planning on purchasing a hard copy (I read this on my Kindle) so I can have it on my bookshelves to re-read on paper. I recommend it to literally anyone who likes to read. (