Station Eleven

This is a wonderful book.

The kind of book you want to lend to people so you can have another person to talk to about it.

The kind of book that you recognize yourself in and wonder whether you should change the way you live.

The kind of book that you rotate in your mind like a gem, just to watch all the facets of the story and the story-telling and the imagery and the cultural connection points, sparkle as your attention focuses on them.

The kind of book that makes you cry without embarrassment.

And yet, I almost didn’t read it because the publisher’s summary reads:

“An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be show more savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.”

Having read the book, I barely recognize this description of it. Did they not read novel? Did they not understand it? Or did they think that bland and mushy would sell better?

“Eerie days of civilization’s collapse” – try brutal and overwhelming and grief-stricken and absolutely terrifying.

“a nomadic group of actors … risking everything for art and humanity” – this is so far off the point that it makes me want to scream. Nowhere in the world they live in is safe. They do what they do because it allows them to live in the relative safety of a group, enables them to create a “family” of musicians and actors, lets them practice the skills that make them who they are, takes them away from the violence they sometimes have to commit and, as it says on the side of one of their caravans: “Because Survival Is Not Sufficient.”

So what is “Station Eleven” really like?

It’s non-linear and lyrical. The structure of the story reminded me of songs where a chorus repeats but with one or two words changing each time so that the message in not only new and different but all the choruses act together like a chord or perhaps a riff, that sticks in the memory and makes you want to tap your feet. We circle back many times to the same scenes but from a different character’s point of view and with knowledge that was not available to us the last time we visited the scene. Meaning shifts, perceptions of characters alter, the scene itself takes on the quality of a memory that has mutated into a family story, more lore than fact, packed with more meaning than data.

At one points the narrator says: “A life, remembered, is a series of photographs and disconnected short films.” Much of “Station Eleven” is like that: collages of images that the reader forms into patterns, comic book pages where the colors and shapes and the relative size of the panels carry the story while the text is a decorative highlight.

“Station Eleven” braids strands of cultural references, from “Star Trek Voyager”, source of the “Because Survival Is Not Sufficient” quote, through TV Guides and gossip magazines, to Shakespeare’s plays, and live classical music, to create a bright new world full of hope, threat and sorrow.

“Station Eleven” lacquers theme over theme, achieving the rich patina of a Japanese pagoda: the performance of “King Lear” that starts the book – a man made mad by the loss of his world – plastic snow falling as the actor dies, echoed by the plastic snow in the snow globe in the airport that provokes a long chain of thought about all the people involved in getting it there. The mutation from “Because Survival Is Not Sufficient” to a musician's decision to write a play “Because Shakespeare Is Not Sufficient”. The impact that the graphic novel, “Station Eleven” has on the woman who wrote it, the children who received the only two copies to survive – one an actress with throwing knives in her belt, the other a prophet with death in his heart. The power of theatre in the old world and the new to lift people above the everyday and unlock the emotions that necessity and expedience have bound and imprisoned.

“Station Eleven” uses the device of a world twenty years after a pandemic has killed almost everyone on the planet to show us the fragile beauty and improbable complexity of the world we live in every day.

Sometimes it evokes sorrow, with people focusing on what was lost – the last ice-cream they had, the last plane that actually flew them somewhere, the last phone call that they made, which they wasted on their boss yet never got to say goodbye to their family. The sorrow mirrors the scene in the graphic novel where Dr Eleven says “I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.” and the feeling of the people of Undersea who cannot bear their new world and just want to go home.

Sometimes, when looking at a night sky, free of light pollution and thick with stars, or when we watch a deer pause and then enter a silent forest and understand the “beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone”, we experience not loss but release from all the day to day things that were once so important and have now become objects in a museum, whose purpose and function seems less and less believable over time. Then we can look back with Miranda and say: “This life was never ours…we were only ever borrowing it.”

The accuracy of some parts of the book made me flinch. My job is so close to Clarke’s that it hit hard when a person he is interviewing helps him realize that he is sleep-walking through his life, doing something that he doesn’t hate but which leaves him numb and, beneath the numbness, perhaps a little angry. The feeling fits me like a well worn in shoe and makes me long to go barefoot.

“Station Eleven” got under my skin: the beauty of the language, the elegant strength of the woven storylines, the humanity of the characters, the transformation of our normal world into something magical and precious, the presentation of a future world that is one part loss, one part violence and two parts hope, the recognition that hell is not other people but the absence of those we love.

With a book like this, there is no substitute for the text. Read it. Tell everyone what you thought about it. show less

This book was initially recommended to me by a professor who wanted to include it in our tragedy class, but cut it for time. And let me tell you, this book was not the easiest thing to read in 2022. The writing style and story were beautiful, but the content hit a bit close to home.

Emily St. John Mandel's writing style in this book is succinct yet elegant. She keeps it simple, but this never detracts from the emotions of the story. If anything, the reserved quality makes you feel the emotions more. I don't often cry over books, but one scene had me sobbing with only a few sentences and an implication.

She handles the multiple plot lines with just as much grace. The stories of Arthur, Kirsten (a traveling actress who was only a kid when show more the pandemic began), Jeevan (a former paparazzo who tries to save Arthur's life), Miranda (Arthur's ex-wife and comic artist), and Clark (Arthur's old friend) are beautifully woven together to create a rich narrative. And while I have seen some reviews upset that not of the plot lines and characters came together in the end, I think that its the mark of a mature narrative. Realistically, the chances of all of them meeting in the end is unlikely, and part of the beauty of this book is the harsh realism.

This book tackles a lot of hard questions. What is the point of art in crisis? How do we survive? Why do we survive? What do we know when everything we have known is gone? While COVID-19 is not as bad as the Georgian Flu, these questions still resonate for us, especially those of us who lost people or have been permanently affected by the virus.

This book can be a hard read for people, but I would definitely recommend it. show less

Incredible book, feels so unique compared to other apocalyptic stories I've read. The writing feels so natural and interesting that even during chapters that I felt weren't plot heavy, I still couldn't put the book down. This is a novel I could have read in 1 or 2 sessions, I was that drawn in.

I loved the flashbacks and the connections among the main characters. Arthur was such an interesting figure, tragic, a blowhard yet I always understood why he made the choices he did. Incredible atmosphere and melancholy, and obviously the book hits harder now that we've lived through our own pandemic.

This book holds a deep quiet. The story is unerringly beautiful (even in maudlin moments), but the prose is dark, intricate, deliberate. It wends its way, unhurried, between sprawling images. A child reads the bible to Schrodinger's airplane. A woman gazes at container ships at the end of the world. Dawns and dusks melt into each other with each perspective, and readers are left knowing only that there is beauty in vulnerable persistence, in the growth at the end of destruction.

Normally, I would not recommend reading pandemic fiction during the covid-19 crisis. But tonight, the evening after the first American inauguration putting a woman in our highest offices, this book breathes. Tonight, after the first of my friends and family show more members have been vaccinated, I read "survival is insufficient," and I smile. Tonight, Station Eleven brings to mind all the work we have done, not to go back to normal, but to be better. We will be better. show less

Emily St. John Mandel gives us a post-apocalyptic society that collapses in an all-too-plausible manner -- a flu that spreads around the globe within days and kills over 90 percent of the population within weeks -- and explores the aftermath twenty years later through a group called the Travelling Symphony. Taking their motto from Star Trek: Voyager ("Survival is insufficient"), they travel around the Great Lakes and perform Shakespeare and classical concerts in the towns that have sprung up following the collapse. The story is peopled with lots of interesting characters, including Arthur Leander, the King Lear whose on-stage death in Toronto is the beginning of the end; Kirsten Raymonde, a child actor who was on stage with Arthur and show more doesn't really remember much of life before the apocalypse; and Jeevan Chauhadry, a trainee paramedic and former paparazzo who rushes to Arthur's aid. There are many others whom these three meet over the course of the novel.

The atmosphere throughout is spooky, and it provides much food for thought. The San Francisco Chronicle review quoted on the back of my copy comments on how this book reminds us "how paper-thin the achievements of civilization are", and it's true. With one yank of the electrical grid, and with a significant amount of the population unable to carry out their regular duties, what we call civilization will grind to a halt in a very short time. It's frightening to think of. And it's weird to be writing this review on a computer after having written notes on an iPhone; both of these devices would be useless in the environment of Station Eleven.

In terms of the usual post-apocalyptic tropes and fearsome aspects, I am very glad that there was not too much dwelling on the extra potential dangers for women (i.e. rape and sexual slavery). They are not ignored, but they are not given pages upon pages of graphic details. Instead, the focus is on the struggle to survive against the elements and in the face of dwindling supplies, and the ability of people to band together and make the most of things, including the creation of a "Museum of Civilization" (which, much to my amusement, I thought was in Ottawa/Gatineau at first, because that is the former name of the Canadian Museum of History).

The story itself jumps around in time and between characters a fair bit, making it potentially confusing if you're not paying attention, but each segment is well realized and adds another piece to the puzzle. There are a few "aha!" moments that are satisfying, and the story ends on a nice contemplative note.

This was a very good story overall. Probably not my best of the year, but certainly well worth reading if you like your post-apocalypse without disgusting zombies or you like to think about the sometimes unlikely connections and coincidences that bind us together or send us on the paths we take. show less

I will admit I had seen the show prior to reading the novel. Going into this novel, I had an idea of what I could possibly expect, but wasn't entirely sure what would be given. Station Eleven delivers a non-linear story revolving around a set group of people that intertwine throughout life. Through the glue that is acting, a comic book, and a paperweight, we see how the lives of 7 people interact even after an apocalyptic pandemic.

Emily St. John Mandel beautifully told a story that not only seemed incredibly personal and human in the formatting and structure, but also in the story itself. This isn't a grand story intent on having this big survival craziness targeting the horrors of humanity. This is a simple story of the neutrality, show more goodness, and sometimes harsh horrifying breaks within humanity. The one thing that keeps going is forms of art and through that art, we see humanity gain hope as it comes together, rebuilds, and grows. show less

"The more you remember, the more you've lost." - Emily St. John Mandel, "Station Eleven"

Others ask, is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Emily St. John Mandel repeatedly asks a slightly different question in her post-apocalyptic novel "Station Eleven." Are those who remember the world before civilization ended better or worse off than those who don't?

The question is raised by many different characters in many different ways in the years after the Georgia Flu kills 99.9 percent of the world's population. The only survivors are those who are either immune to the virus or happen to be so isolated that they miss the contagion altogether. So many people are killed that the ability to do everything from produce show more energy to manufacture virtually anything is lost. People gather into traveling bands, the strong preying on the weak, with everyone constantly searching for food.

As years pass, older people still fondly remember airplanes, computers, cell phones and televisions. Those who are younger remember little or nothing about the civilization that was lost, although a museum established in an abandoned airport gives them some idea. So who is better off? "We long only for the world we were born into," one character says, a commentary most of us can relate to after a certain stage of life, with or without an apocalypse.

Two key characters were small children when civilization ended. The girl, one of the novel's more positive characters, remembers very little of those days. Of the boy, the story's villain, she wonders if he "had had the misfortune of remembering everything."

The story is framed by literature, Shakespeare on one end and a graphic novel called "Station Eleven" on the other. The latter, created by one of the main characters, tells of a space station that has been traveling to distant stars for so many years that the crew has no memory of Earth, the planet where their flight originated. Station Eleven is the world they were born into.

As for William Shakespeare, he was living at the time of the Bubonic Plague, and his work was influenced by it. "Station Eleven" opens with a production of one of Shakespeare's plays in Toronto just before the Georgia Flu strikes, and afterward one of the roving bands performs his plays on their travels, mostly through what once was Michigan. Computers, cell phones and televisions may no longer be operable, but if Shakespeare survives, can civilization be truly said to have died? show less