Title: Station Eleven
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Genre: Dystopian
Pages: 333 (Paperback)
Publisher: Harper Collins Canada
Publication date: September 9th, 2014
Synopsis from Station Eleven's Goodreads page
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 savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.
Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten's arm is a line from Star Trek: "Because survival is insufficient." But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.
Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, 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.
I picked Station Eleven up on a whim, after seeing how many other bookstagrammers and book bloggers had loved it. I wasn't 100% into the idea of the book, because I'm a bit past the dystopian/end-of-the-world genre in books now, but I absolutely love all things Shakespeare, so I figured I would give it a go.
The first 150 or so pages of the book I found very slow, and I found it difficult to understand how everything connected to become the dystopian story that I had expected. I also found the alternating perspectives to be confusing, because it would alternate between quite a few different characters in each chapter, with no heading saying when it was switching perspectives. I have no problems with alternating perspectives, I just found that when it suddenly switches, without warning, between more than four completely different characters and time periods, that it gets slightly confusing it you aren't paying attention to every single word.
After the first 150 pages though, I found the story picked up quite a bit. I started enjoying and getting used to the alternating perspectives, and found the story to be very refreshing.
I really enjoyed how this story was more of a end-of-the-world story opposed to a dystopian. Dystopians, to me, are books that there has been a collapsed society and a new, crazy government has taken over with insane, strict rules, whereas an end-of-the-world book is just that the government has collapsed, and everyone just does what they want. I enjoyed how this story was more centered around survival and loss opposed to violence and world building. I found that it allowed the characters to grow more on their own, so the reader is able to see the differences in them, and how their new world and experiences have changed them as a person.
I found the characters to be refreshing, and each of them very different. There are a few characters that were minor that I had grown attached to and wish there was a bit more of them in the book, but I also enjoyed how some characters were moving in and out of the story the whole time.
I loved the setting of the story, being in Canada, because I have never read an end-of-the-world/dystopian book that takes place in Canada, which was refreshing and interesting to me.
If you want something a little different, or something that feels like a dystopian book without any of the government building or fighting you are used to, I highly recommend this book.
Overall - ★★★★☆
Synopsis from Station Eleven's Goodreads page
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 savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.
Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten's arm is a line from Star Trek: "Because survival is insufficient." But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.
Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, 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.
I picked Station Eleven up on a whim, after seeing how many other bookstagrammers and book bloggers had loved it. I wasn't 100% into the idea of the book, because I'm a bit past the dystopian/end-of-the-world genre in books now, but I absolutely love all things Shakespeare, so I figured I would give it a go.
The first 150 or so pages of the book I found very slow, and I found it difficult to understand how everything connected to become the dystopian story that I had expected. I also found the alternating perspectives to be confusing, because it would alternate between quite a few different characters in each chapter, with no heading saying when it was switching perspectives. I have no problems with alternating perspectives, I just found that when it suddenly switches, without warning, between more than four completely different characters and time periods, that it gets slightly confusing it you aren't paying attention to every single word.
After the first 150 pages though, I found the story picked up quite a bit. I started enjoying and getting used to the alternating perspectives, and found the story to be very refreshing.
I really enjoyed how this story was more of a end-of-the-world story opposed to a dystopian. Dystopians, to me, are books that there has been a collapsed society and a new, crazy government has taken over with insane, strict rules, whereas an end-of-the-world book is just that the government has collapsed, and everyone just does what they want. I enjoyed how this story was more centered around survival and loss opposed to violence and world building. I found that it allowed the characters to grow more on their own, so the reader is able to see the differences in them, and how their new world and experiences have changed them as a person.
I found the characters to be refreshing, and each of them very different. There are a few characters that were minor that I had grown attached to and wish there was a bit more of them in the book, but I also enjoyed how some characters were moving in and out of the story the whole time.
I loved the setting of the story, being in Canada, because I have never read an end-of-the-world/dystopian book that takes place in Canada, which was refreshing and interesting to me.
If you want something a little different, or something that feels like a dystopian book without any of the government building or fighting you are used to, I highly recommend this book.
Overall - ★★★★☆
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