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Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel (Goodreads Author)

4.05 · Rating details · 338,645 ratings · 40,172 reviews

Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the 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 a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as ...more

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Hardcover, 333 pages

Published September 9th 2014 by Knopf

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Emily Mandel - author

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Jul 10, 2014 Melanie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"Survival is insufficient".
Star Trek: Voyager

Novels whose premise strips away the world as we know it can be tricky territory. They can be innately dramatic, overwrought, didactic and riddled with Big Questions about Life and Death that leave no room for contemplation. Think Ayn Rand on her best day.

Or they can be like "Station Eleven". Quiet. Dark. Elegiac. Lit from within like a mysterious firefly. Unhurried. Steeped in small acts and evocative landscapes. Lonely. Elegant. Radiant. Heartbroken ...more

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Nov 24, 2016 Maggie Stiefvater rated it it was amazing

Shelves: adult, recommended

I don't know if you will like this book.

It's a very particular kind of book done very well, which is not remotely a promise that you will like it. The jacket copy is not untrue, but it also isn't helpful. Yes, this is book about the end of the world as we know it, yes, this is a book about a post-apocalyptic Shakespearean troupe, yes, this is a book about a Hollywood actor's dispiriting love life. But that doesn't tell you how the book feels — what the experience is like reading it. This is les ...more

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Jul 24, 2015 Rick Riordan rated it it was amazing

Adult speculative fiction

Even since reading The Stand by Stephen King when I was a kid, I’ve had a soft spot for apocalyptic plagues that wipe out humanity. Er . . . I mean in fiction, of course. Station Eleven is in that vein.

The Georgia Flu sweeps across the world, killing most of humanity. St. John-Mandel, using beautiful prose and poignant characterization, follows the lives of various survivors, tracing how their lives intersect in a group of entertainers called the Traveling Symphony. The ...more

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Aug 09, 2014 karen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: the-end, live-through-this, free-from-work

Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest. He died three weeks later on the road out of the city.

on the night the world begins to end, a man has a heart attack and dies onstage while performing the lead role in king lear. considering that shortly after this, the georgia flu will have killed off 99% of the population and changed the world as we know it forever, it seems unlikely that he would be remembered among so many millions dead. but that' ...more

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Nov 23, 2014 Jeffrey Keeten rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: post-apocalyptic

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

When the Georgia Flu sweeps around the world killing 99.6% of the population there were suddenly... a lot of people... to long for. The people missing from our lives is the hardest part. We mourn their loss, but we also have to mourn for the part of ourselves that is lost with each of their passings.

To survive is painful.

”Civilization in Year Twenty was an archipelago of small towns. These towns had fought off ferals, buried their neighbors, liv ...more

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Dec 04, 2014 Kelly (and the Book Boar) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: liburrrrrry-book, everyone-loved-it-but-me, read-in-2015, book-of-the-month-selection

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

“The thing with the new world is it’s just horrifically short on elegance.”

Everyone loved this book. I’m talking EVERYONE. I have 1 – yep ONE – friend or person I follow on Goodreads who gave it less than 3 Stars. In order to prove how much of an idiot I am and that no one should take my opinion seriously, I will super giffify this review.

Station Eleven begins with the story of Arthur, who passes away on stage while performing ...more

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Feb 10, 2020 chai ♡ rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2020, adult, adult-sff, fiction

Edit: Amidst the coronavirus panic, this book now hits different 😬

This book lay undisturbed on my shelf for years, and now that I have finally read it, I only feel the sort of heaviness that comes from wanting something for so long that the eventual achievement of it is a loss.

There are many things this book does well, and I was conscious throughout that I was reading a story that, for all intents and purposes, should have sung to me. But in the end, I'm not sure that Station Eleven was the book ...more

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Dec 19, 2014 Violet wells rated it liked it

Shelves: dystopia, 21st-century

I wanted and expected to enjoy this novel more than I did. There’s much that’s gripping and clever but it was spoiled for me by a sloppiness in its construction, most notably an excess of half-baked and obfuscating characters. Was this novel rushed to cash in on the Hunger Games pandemic? At times it comes across as a novel written with heart but equally it can seem sketchy and only half imagined. Also should be said that it karaokes most other successful dystopian novels of recent times, most o I wanted and expected to enjoy this novel more than I did. There’s much that’s gripping and clever but it was spoiled for me by a sloppiness in its construction, most notably an excess of half-baked and obfuscating characters. Was this novel rushed to cash in on the Hunger Games pandemic? At times it comes across as a novel written with heart but equally it can seem sketchy and only half imagined. Also should be said that it karaokes most other successful dystopian novels of recent times, most obviously, and by turns, Cloud Atlas, The Road, The Hunger Games and Dog Star.
Primary weakness of this novel is its characters. Too many and sometimes not only incidental to the story but clumsily obtrusive. The novel has as its fulcrum two events – a performance of King Lear immediately before the pandemic arrives, when Arthur Leander has a fatal heart attack on stage and a dinner party when Miranda, Arthur’s first wife and the creator of the Station Eleven comic, first realises her husband is betraying her. The most unwanted character in the book, Jeevan is present at both of these events, first as a paparazzo, then as a training paramedic. A preposterous coincidence (preparing us, in some way, for the tapestry of preposterous coincidences that follow and have to be accepted if the novel is going to work) that might have been a brilliant stroke of mischievous humour if Jeevan had any other role to play in the novel. But he doesn’t. Mandel simply uses him to dramatise the immediate aftermath of the epidemic. But she has half a dozen other characters who could easily have performed this function. In fact it would have given the Travelling Symphony more body had she used Kirsten here, the orchestra’s principle character. As it is the Symphony remains a sketched idea that flits in and out of the book with little more body than reflected light. Kirsten is another character who for me didn’t work at all. She seems like a photocopy of the heroine of The Hunger Games – never even remotely convincing as a warrior child with her knife throwing expertise. Conveniently we’re not told what happened to her to justify her transition from innocent child to stalker/warrior.
Everyone in the novel is a custodian – another example of characters with cloned purposes. Kirsten is the custodian of the Station Eleven comic but so too is Arthur’s son; Arthur’s son is also the custodian of religious fervour, Arthur’s best friend is the custodian of the novel’s museum, the Travelling Symphony is the custodian of culture and another pointless character called Francois starts a newspaper and so becomes the custodian of the written word (the interviews with Kirsten don’t work at all except to make the Cloud Atlas shoplifting more apparent) So everyone’s representing something and as a result, with the exception of Miranda, the creator and, to a lesser extent, Arthur, the actor, don’t ever come alive in their own right.

Triumphs: Mandel, in essence, is an admirable storyteller. And the fluid shape of the novel is great. Its flashbacking roving archaeological momentum almost like the act of nostalgia itself – the novel is obsessively nostalgic, most successfully through the imagery of the comics, least successfully when nostalgia is constantly the subject of conversation.
Best character by a country mile is the Station Eleven comic and its creator Miranda. The comic book is cleverly used as a kind of portal between the before and after – and here the nostalgia theme is at its most poignant. Whenever the comic was the novel’s focal point it really held my interest. Shame that it was cluttered with so many other cloned and conflicting narratives. I couldn’t help feeling, if only someone had prompted Mandel to do one final draft. Hew the thing into a more polished form and think out some of the elements that weren’t thoroughly thought out. As commercial storytelling it’s a good novel, as literature it doesn’t cut it for me. More a collection of catchy pop songs than a moving cello sonata.
...more

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Feb 05, 2015 Regan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-owned-read, favorites

A wonderful story about the resilience of people.

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Dec 08, 2017 Cece (ProblemsOfaBookNerd) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: my-books, favorites, read-in-2017, split-pov

Until I someday write a longer review (you never know, it could happen), I’ll just say this: I sat down intending to read about 50 pages tonight and wound up reading 200. I also completely forgot the world around me existed for a few hours, and that is the highest praise I can personally give any book.

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Jun 05, 2019 Always Pouting rated it really liked it

This was so good, I started reading it at like 11 pm the other night because I just wanted to read a little before going to sleep and ended up staying up until 6 am to finish it. I really like the way the story unfolds and the way everything is connected, I'm a sucker for threads coming together in a story and like following characters who come into contact with on another and how their different story lines end up. Not sure about that ending though, but I guess I also tend to not find most endi ...more

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Jun 17, 2018 Mark Lawrence rated it it was amazing

Station Eleven is a work of literary fiction. The fact that half of it is set in a post apocalyptic future doesn't change this.

The book is a study of lives before and after the end of the world (a flu strain wipes almost everyone out in short order - quite reminiscent of The Stand in that, but the characters here are far less colourful, there's nothing supernatural going on, and the actual days of dying are very much off screen).

There's very little action, tension, or intrigue in this novel but ...more

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Sep 15, 2014 Carol rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I don't know why it bothers me so that I thought this book was just ok. So many of my GR friends have embraced this Station Eleven and have shouted its praises from the rooftop. I struggled through the first 80 pages, didn't want to throw it under the couch, but wasn't finding myself engaged. Perhaps I should have quit while I was ahead but stubborn that I am, I carried on. It never really got better for me but I did finish. At least I won't feel left out.

Shakespeare is dead and I prefer him to ...more

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May 08, 2017 Fabian rated it it was amazing

An eclectic, always wondrous literary feast, with a generous dispersal of savory anecdotes, attitudes & (grand) themes. It has all the BEST features of previous apocalyterature & road stories (the pale terror of McCarthy's "The Road", the joie de vivre/bonhomie of the band of outsiders in "The Wizard of Oz," the irresistible speed & power of "Mad Max: Fury Road")-- it all adds up to something as interesting & bizarre as David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas."

"Station Eleven" is a novel that's so full of ...more

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Mar 30, 2018 Petrik rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Post-apocalyptic fans

Milestone achieved = Review #200 within one year six months of joining Goodreads!

Thought-provoking, haunting, and atmospheric.

Station Eleven is an adult post apocalyptic/dystopian novel written by Emily St. John Mandel and I’m actually quite surprised by how enjoyable it was, especially considering that I bought this book on a whim two days ago without knowing anything about it whatsoever. Those who followed my reviews should know by now that SFF is my number one favorite genre to read, that’s w ...more

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Aug 18, 2015 Lyn rated it really liked it

An exceptionally well rendered portrait of Elvis on a magnificent black velvet background.

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel is the "Velvet Elvis" of post-apocalyptic books, a surprisingly different form than usual with a style all its own.

“Post-apocalyptic literary science fiction” was one way I have heard it described, and also “pastoral science fiction” and I here adopt both descriptions. Mandel has certainly softened the Mad Max edges off her story and provided a ponderous, m An exceptionally well rendered portrait of Elvis on a magnificent black velvet background.

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel is the "Velvet Elvis" of post-apocalyptic books, a surprisingly different form than usual with a style all its own.

“Post-apocalyptic literary science fiction” was one way I have heard it described, and also “pastoral science fiction” and I here adopt both descriptions. Mandel has certainly softened the Mad Max edges off her story and provided a ponderous, meandering and thoughtful account of a world with a lot less people.

Telling the story before and after a global pandemic, many readers will liken this to Stephen King’s 1978 classic The Stand, as here the culprit is the Georgian flu which kills in hours not days. Mandel’s prose is in tone and structure like Jennifer Egan’s award winning 2010 novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. We visit 20 years after the collapse and then relive moments years before and then contemporaneous with the global spread of the disease. I was also reminded of Bradbury’s “There will come soft rains” with it’s quiet, somber reflections and recollections of the time before. Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney is another book that I would categorize Station Eleven with – a softer, gentler and kinder vision of a world after catastrophe.

“Because survival is insufficient” – an old Star Trek slogan sums up this work. Mandel portrays her survivors as yearning to keep the flame of civilization lit. We follow Miranda, the Station Eleven graphic novel artist and the graphic novel that survives the apocalypse. Also, Arthur Leander, an actor who plays King Lear just before the pandemic. Finally, Mandel introduces a troupe of actors and musicians traveling from town to town after the “collapse” performing symphonies and Shakespeare.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Mandel poses existential questions about living where only weeks before the pandemic people were worried about meaningless, inconsequential things and only minimally connected to the world around them. Station Eleven, named after the graphic novel which had a very limited production and was drawn not for commercial success but for the sake of the art, is an examination of our culture in eulogy.

One of the central characters, Clark, forms a museum of civilization in an abandoned airport and preserves relics of what the people of the new world should try to remember of the past, only recently departed.

A very good book that I highly recommend.

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...more

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Sep 30, 2014 Adina rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: canada, dystopia, fantasy-sf

I enjoyed this book a lot, especially as it is different than other dystopia novels that I’ve read.

The most interesting fact about the book is the non-linear structure. It starts with the death of a famous actor while playing King Lear in a Toronto theater. In the same night, the end of the world comes, this time disguised as a flu that wipes out 99% of human population.

The next part introduces us to the Symphony, a traveling theater company that plays Shakespeare in the remaining human settle I enjoyed this book a lot, especially as it is different than other dystopia novels that I’ve read.

The most interesting fact about the book is the non-linear structure. It starts with the death of a famous actor while playing King Lear in a Toronto theater. In the same night, the end of the world comes, this time disguised as a flu that wipes out 99% of human population.

The next part introduces us to the Symphony, a traveling theater company that plays Shakespeare in the remaining human settlements, more than 20 years after the end of the world. One of the actresses in the walking theater was a child actress in the King Lear play. After that, the author turns back in time when the actor meets his first wife and then we come back to the post- apocalypse timeline to other character. I admire the creativity of this constant coming and going through time, before and after day one of the Apocalypse and all the background stories. The core of the novel is the actor who dies at the beginning of the story and the people he touched during his life.

There are three main themes that I could identify in the book:
1. „Survival is insufficient” is the motto written on the first caravan of the travelling theater. People are trying to find meaning in their lives besides the everyday struggle for survival in the apocalyptic setting. They do it thorough music, theater, religion, museum of memorabilia , the collecting of different objects of the past etc.
2. Every person touches the life of other people and leaves a mark in the universe. I guess this theme touched me the most and distinguished Station Eleven from other dystopian books. I loved how every character was somehow connected with the actor or with other people from his life and how everything was revealed gradually and through flashbacks, like a puzzle.
3. The survival. This is the part that had the least importance in the book. Maybe because the author gave less thought to the practical aspects of survival some parts of the narration seem unrealistic. I was annoyed a couple of times by the decisions of the characters.
An example: „He somehow hadn't thought much about what it would be like to sleep out here, unprotected. He was cold. He could no longer feel his toes, or his tongue either, because he'd been putting snow in his mouth to stay hydrated. ”
Let’s ignore the fact that the character eats snow without boiling it which is very dangerous as snow is full of bacteria and people are known to have died from doing that. After weeks (or months) spent in his brother’s apartment he finally decides to leave Toronto and go south to USA. What I do not understand is that he plans about leaving for weeks but he somehow does not think about the cold weather. He could have just broken in a mountaineering store on Yonge Street and grabed all the equipment he needed. 99% of the world population was gone so chances were that nobody would have stopped him. Moreover, I did not understand why people left the cities. Cities had more resources for food and other necessities than other places, especially at the beginning, but everybody seemed to run from them. One of the reasons stated was violence but the reason does not seem enough for me. Finally, I could not grasp why people chose to live in gas stations or in McDonalds restaurants when the survivors could inhabit any house they wanted as most of them were empty. This detail was incomprehensible to me.

P.S. Throughout the book the author refers to different other books about Apocalypse. I wonder if, when she wrote the following quote, she thought of The Road by Cormack McCarthy: „her brother had been plagued by nightmare. "the road", he'd always said, when she shook me awake and asked what he'd been dreaming of. he'd said, "I hope you never remember it" ...more

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Jan 25, 2015 Felicia rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

This was a lovely, elevated apocalypse story that was very touching. The integration of acting and Hollywood world was really interesting, I'm sure even moreso to someone who isn't in "the biz." If you want a dose of great storytelling with your post-disaster wasteland fiction, this is a book for you! ...more

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Jan 25, 2019 Virginia Ronan ♥ Herondale ♥ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

”What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, Jeevan. That’s the short answer. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s a flu, that much is obvious, but I’ve never seen anything like it. It is so fast. It just seems to spread so quickly –“

This is one of the rare times I’m actually searching for the right words and if you know me, you know that this doesn’t happen all too often. *lol* To describe this book is kind of hard though so bear with me when I don’t always manage to convey my thoughts and feelings. It’s not ...more

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Jul 06, 2014 Jill rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2016, dystopia

It’s no accident that Emily St. John Mandel opens her haunting new novel with a scene from King Lear, who ends up mad and blind but clear as a bell. One of that play’s memorable lines is: “The oldest hath borne most; we that are young/Shall never see so much nor live so long.”

Indeed, there is a divide between those who have borne much and those who will never see so much. In the opening pages, renowned actor Arthur Leander dies while performing King Lear. Before the week is out, the vast majorit It’s no accident that Emily St. John Mandel opens her haunting new novel with a scene from King Lear, who ends up mad and blind but clear as a bell. One of that play’s memorable lines is: “The oldest hath borne most; we that are young/Shall never see so much nor live so long.”

Indeed, there is a divide between those who have borne much and those who will never see so much. In the opening pages, renowned actor Arthur Leander dies while performing King Lear. Before the week is out, the vast majority of the audience – indeed, the world – will be dead from the pandemic Georgia flu.

There are two key story lines – one before the end of civilization and one after it. The first focuses on Arthur, along with his three ex-wives, best friend Clark, and Jeevan, a one-time paparazzo and good Samaritan, who tries to save him. The other line centers on Kirstin, a young girl who witnessed Arthur’s death, who is now part of a Traveling Symphony, a musical theatre troupe that roams the wasted land to bring music and Shakespeare to the limited number of people who remain…not unlike original Shakespeare actors during plague-filled days of the past.

Woven into these tales is the inspiration for the book’s title. Arthur’s first wife, Miranda (likely based on the character from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, who utters, “O brave new world, That has such people in’t!”) She is the writer and designer of a sci-fi graphic comic, with threads of what eventually happens on earth: “There are people who, after fifteen years of perpetual twilight, long only to go home, to return to Earth and beg for amnesty; to take their chances under alien rule. They live in the Undersea, an interlined network of vast fallout shelters under Station Eleven’s oceans.”

Station Eleven is a terrifying, haunting, and stunning book that speaks eloquently on many key themes: survival during devastating times, our ephemeral existence and the fleeting nature of fame compared to the endurance of art. Indeed, it is only our shared stories – from Shakespeare to graphic books – that ties us all together, connects us and makes us human.

After turning the last page, I sat completely still for a minute, stunned, before taking my dogs out. While outside, I was driven to tears by the beauty of the fireflies lighting up against a dark Chicago night. Station Eleven – in many ways, a psalm of appreciation for the simple things in our current existence – wields THAT sort of power. It’s an amazing book and is highly recommended.

...more

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Nov 01, 2018 emma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, literary-fiction, recommend, beautifully-written, 5-stars, reviewed, non-ya, gorgeous-covers, dark, sci-fi

This book is so beautiful.

I am not even talking about the cover - although actually, let’s take a second to talk about the cover. LOOK AT THIS COVER! Are you seeing it? So lovely. So so pretty. Looooook aaaaaaattttt itttttttt.

Okay, now that we’ve done that.

This book is so beautiful.

I don’t know what I expected. I honestly don’t really know why I picked this up, besides the aforementioned pretty-cover thing. I’m not a huge sci-fi person. I’m definitely not a huge post-apocalyptic dystopian person ...more

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Dec 30, 2014 Roxane rated it really liked it

Surprised by how much I enjoyed this book because I am a bit burnt out on post apocalyptic fiction. Well written, intricately plotted. The ending falters a bit, awash in an overreach for poignancy. I know how I definitely don't want to die and that is on a quarantined airplane on a tarmac in Northern Michigan, with a bunch of other plague-ridden folk. Stuff of nightmares. Also, I struggled to believe there would be a major international airport with three concourses in northern Michigan. I've li ...more

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Apr 19, 2015 Mary ~Ravager of Tomes~ rated it really liked it

Shelves: 4-star, year-2017

Actual Rating: 4.5 Stars

"We traveled so far and your friendship meant everything. It was difficult, but there were moments of beauty. Everything ends. I am not afraid."

Station Eleven is a book that sat hovering in my peripheral vision for a couple of years. I promised myself I would read it in 2017, and I'm really glad I finally did.

The book begins with the end.

The end of actor, Arthur Leander, and the end of the world in the form of a fast-acting flu-like virus. From that point on, the story ...more

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Nov 04, 2014 Kemper rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015, apocalypse-now, modern-lit, sci-fi

This is one well written apocalypse.

Arthur Leander is a famous actor who suffers a heart attack and dies on stage just before a deadly version of the swine flu kills most of humanity. Station Eleven then uses Arthur as the center of a web of connections that we learn from the people in his life before, during and after the disease wipes out the world as we know it. Kirsten sees Arthur die as a child actor, and years later she’s part of the Traveling Symphony that tours the small towns of the pos This is one well written apocalypse.

Arthur Leander is a famous actor who suffers a heart attack and dies on stage just before a deadly version of the swine flu kills most of humanity. Station Eleven then uses Arthur as the center of a web of connections that we learn from the people in his life before, during and after the disease wipes out the world as we know it. Kirsten sees Arthur die as a child actor, and years later she’s part of the Traveling Symphony that tours the small towns of the post-apocalyptic landscape. Jeevan is an ex-paparazzo turned paramedic who once stalked Arthur, but he is in the audience when the actor keels over and tries to save his life. Miranda is Arthur’s first wife who could never adjust to the spotlight his fame brought and wrote a comic book about a space station as a hobby. Clark was one of Arthur’s best friends who gets stranded far from home when things really start to fall apart.

The thing that astonishes me most about his is just how deftly Emily St. John Mandel portrays the end of the world. There’s no shortage of post-apocalyptic scenarios out there, but whether the culprits are zombies or nuclear weapons or killer viruses the aftermath is generally as brutal as an ax blow to the face. Mandel writes with such an understated elegance that there’s a dark beauty and grace to her fallen world even as she acknowledges all the hardship and horrors of it.

She also does a masterful job of managing the structure with its shifting third party perspectives at various times. All the links and coincidences could have felt very forced and ultimately pointless, but again it’s her skill at making us interested in all of these people at their various stages of pre and post apocalypse that make it all work so that the connections feel organic and not simply plot points.

While the post-apocalyptic world seems believable for the most part there are some quibbles I could make. Mandel writes this as if a flu with a near 100% mortality rate would essentially wipe out all the accumulated knowledge and technical ability of the survivors and takes everyone back to an almost medieval way of life.

It’s weird that everything has been so ransacked just fifteen years later because the math doesn’t seem right there. If 99% of the US died within days so that there was no prolonged destructive cycle to use up resources, that'd be roughly 3 million people left in a country that had all the crap that 300 million people accumulated. Yet, Kristen is amazed to find a house in the woods that had not been searched where she finds a dress to replace hers that is worn out. Or guns and ammo are portrayed as being increasingly rare even though America has enough guns that each survivor could have about 1000 each. Books also seem to be in short supply as if the libraries were also killed by the flu.

So those would be some serious flaws in the premise if you were judging this solely on criteria like world building (Or world destroying.) and plausibility, but it didn’t lower my opinion much because this just isn’t that kind of book. It’s more interested at exploring human connections as well as providing a reminder that we’re living in an age of unappreciated wonders that is a lot more fragile than we want to admit, and at that Mandel succeeds exceedingly well. ...more

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May 27, 2014 Blair rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley, sff, cults-communes-captivity, 2014-release, past-and-present, favourites, read-on-kindle, womens-prize

First, two points about my experience of reading so far in 2014.

1. I've read some great books this year, but in terms of highly anticipated new fiction, 2014 has frequently been disappointing. Elizabeth is Missing and The Miniaturist, two enormously hyped debuts I had been hearing about since around a year ago, were both perfectly readable and okay, but fell far short of what I expected from them; Sarah Waters' new novel The Paying Guests I found boring beyond belief and didn't even finish. Ther ...more

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Oct 08, 2018 jessica rated it really liked it

‘we travelled so far and your friendship meant everything. it was very difficult, but there were moments of beauty. everything ends. i am not afraid.’

wow wow wow. this book. this was quite unlike any other post-apocalyptic story i have ever read before. this didnt focus on the flu that eradicated 99% of earths population. this didnt go into detail about the origin of the disease or the worldwide attempt to contain it. the purpose of the book wasnt to explore the collapse of the world as we ...more

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Aug 11, 2014 Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, library-has, science-fiction

I loved this book - I might buy it on Kindle just so I have it for my own Keepers collection. :) 4.5 stars.

I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.

description

Dr. Eleven stands on dark rocks overlooking an indigo sea at twilight. Small boats move between islands, wind turbines spinning on the horizon. He holds his fedora in his hand. A small white animal stands by his side.

On Station Eleven's surface it is always sunset or twilight or night.

Station Eleven i I loved this book - I might buy it on Kindle just so I have it for my own Keepers collection. :) 4.5 stars.

I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.

description

Dr. Eleven stands on dark rocks overlooking an indigo sea at twilight. Small boats move between islands, wind turbines spinning on the horizon. He holds his fedora in his hand. A small white animal stands by his side.

On Station Eleven's surface it is always sunset or twilight or night.

Station Eleven is an elegy lamenting all that humanity has lost when over 99% of the world's population is killed in a flu pandemic, with quiet notes of hope added by the love and connections that people still create and the arts that they refuse to let die. Loss and hope both permeate this bittersweet tale of a post-apocalypic world.

The story follows several different characters both before and after the disastrous epidemic: Miranda, the artist who creates the titular Station Eleven series of graphic art books, a symbol of the twilight world the survivors find themselves inhabiting. Kirsten, an 8-year old actress who survives the epidemic and in the aftermath ends up with a traveling company that combines music and Shakespeare performances for survivors. Jeevan, the former paparazzo and paramedic who survives by holing up with his disabled brother in an apartment with 17 shopping carts' worth of food and supplies. These and other characters' stories are tied together by Arthur Leander, a famous actor who dies at a relatively early age of a heart attack, on the night the plague begins to take root in North America.

I'm not certain that I entirely agree with the choice to put so much focus on Arthur, whose adult life is filled with wealth, fame and self-indulgence. The most telling point about Arthur for me was when he tells another character that he "has to" leave his second wife for another woman, because he's fallen in love with someone else. That's the story of Arthur's self-absorbed life right there. Toward the end of his life it seems like he's starting to realize what he's given up and to take some steps to try to rectify that. But, of course, it's too late, for him and almost everyone else.

But Arthur does pass on two copies of the Station Eleven comic books given to him by his first wife, to two children who will survive the epidemic. The Station Eleven comics become talismans for these children, in very different ways, one more thread that links characters to each other, and the past to the present.

This was enthralling--I had a hard time putting it down. Mournful but also hopeful, there's tragedy and love and losing your way and connecting to others, all swirled together. I had a few quibbles, but this one will stick with me longer than most books. ...more

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Jan 21, 2020 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it

Shelves: canadian-21st-c, novels, fiction, sci-fi, dystopian

This was a great apocalyptic novel that really grabbed me from the beginning. The writing is really good and the characters are fascinating and realistic.
The Georgia Virus has swept across the planet, annihilating 99% of the human race. We see the collapse of civilization and the 20 years following the disaster through the eyes of a group of characters centered around an actor, Arthur who dies about 24h before all hell breaks loose. The book takes us back and forth in time through the character This was a great apocalyptic novel that really grabbed me from the beginning. The writing is really good and the characters are fascinating and realistic.
The Georgia Virus has swept across the planet, annihilating 99% of the human race. We see the collapse of civilization and the 20 years following the disaster through the eyes of a group of characters centered around an actor, Arthur who dies about 24h before all hell breaks loose. The book takes us back and forth in time through the characters' lives (and deaths in many cases) and weaves a beautiful tale of horror and hope.

The language is descriptive and moving: The highway was miles of permanent gridlock, small trees growing now between cars and thousands of windshields reflecting the sky. There was a skeleton in the driver's seat of the nearest car.
They slept under a tree near the overpass, side by side on top of August's plastic sheet. Kirsten slept fitfully, aware each time she woke of the animals and caravans around her. Hell is the absence of the people you long for. (p. 140)
There is a bit of the bleakness of The Walking Dead here, of course, as this image conjures up that of the abandoned freeways in Atlanta, but there is also a deeper longer expressed here. Mantel's apocalypse is quieter in a sense than that of Kirkman. There is an interesting description of the banalities of Arthur's celebrity lifestyle (3 marriages, 3 divorces, innumerable mistresses but never truly happy) and Clark's realization of the emptiness of his own life before the disaster (p. 163)

Jeevan stays with his brother barricaded in their Toronto apartment building realizing also some of the misconceptions he held of modernity: We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grounds to a halt. (p. 178) That is one of the strengths of this book, to describe the apocalypse before, during and after but interspersed so that there is always a sense of mystery and an undercurrent of loss.

My favorite character was Miranda, Arthur's first wife who becomes a solitary executive who pours her soul into her lifework comic-book masterpiece Station Eleven which frames the entire book, itself a metaphor for life before and after (Undersea) the catastrophe. Two weeks before the end of commercial air travel, Miranda flew to Toronto from New York. It was late October, and she hadn't been back to Canada in some months. She'd always liked the descent into this city, the crowded towers by the lakeshore, the way an infinite ocean of suburbia rushed inward and came to a point at the apex of the CN Tower. She thought the CN Tower was ugly up close, but unexpectedly lovely when viewed from airplane windows. And as always, the sense of Toronto existing in layers (p. 205) These layers are, of course, stripped away by the catastrophe, and laid bare for the survivors.

Toward the end, Miranda is in Malaysia looking at her fleet of container ships, stranded off-shore:Miranda opened her eyes in time to see the sunrise. A wash of violet color, pink and streaks of brilliant orange, the container ships on the horizon suspended between the blaze of the sky and the water aflame, the seascape bleeding into confused visions of Station Eleven, its extravagant sunsets and its indigo sea. The lights of the fleet fading into morning, the ocean burning into sky. (p. 222) I did enjoy the poetry of Mandel's prose quite a lot and found images such as these very visual and appealing.

The other protagonist is Clark who at the end of the book enjoys a moment of reflection and hope after twenty years of calamity and loss: If there are again towns with streetlights if there are symphonies and newspapers, then what else might this awakening world contain? Perhaps vessels are setting out even now traveling toward or away from him, steered by sailors armed with maps and knowledge of the stars, driven by the need or perhaps simply by curiosity: whatever became of the countries on the other side? If nothing else, it's pleasant to consider the possibility. He likes the thought of ships moving over the water, toward another world just out of sight. (p. 332-3)

Overall, the book is pleasant if thought-provoking read (the coronavirus in China (at the time I wrote this article, 30M people were quarantined for exposure to corona)...could this scenario truly happen someday?) and well-written. I am looking forward to reading more from Emily St John Mandel. As the coronavirus continues to spread, this book seems more and more relevant... ...more

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Mar 12, 2015 mark monday rated it really liked it

Shelves: after-the-fall, mnemonic-devices, these-fragile-lives

assorted thoughts

a post-apocalyptic pastoral. I like post-apocalyptic pastorals, their difference from other post-apocalyptic novels that prefer to focus on violence and devolving to a barbaric state. something so relaxing about contemplating an emptied-out world not full of hustle and bustle. all that time to think. but how does one go about eating? or fighting off the occasional aggressor? it would be important to have skill with a knife.

I appreciate the tender humanism at the novel's core.

I a ...more

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Jan 29, 2016 Megan Johnson rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Anyone who enjoys dystopian fiction, Book clubs

Shelves: general-fiction

The world is ending, a deadly pandemic has left 99.99% of humanity dead, and for those left the task of surviving is proving to be more difficult than any of them could have imagined. A famous actor falls dead on stage from a heart attack mere hours before the outbreak affects nearly everyone around him. They would all almost be dead within a few weeks. Station Eleven is the story of those affected by this mass outbreak and how they are somehow all connected in ways that transcend this great tra The world is ending, a deadly pandemic has left 99.99% of humanity dead, and for those left the task of surviving is proving to be more difficult than any of them could have imagined. A famous actor falls dead on stage from a heart attack mere hours before the outbreak affects nearly everyone around him. They would all almost be dead within a few weeks. Station Eleven is the story of those affected by this mass outbreak and how they are somehow all connected in ways that transcend this great tragedy.

If I hadn't been holding the book in my hand and knew from looking at it that I was at the end, I would have thought I had missed something. It wasn't that I didn't like the ending, in fact I thought it was so good that I wanted it to keep going! Put simply, it left off in a place that I found a bit strange. Not unsatisfying, but certainly unexpected.

Overall though, I really enjoyed this read. I said at one point that it felt like something I would have read in a literature class back in school. It was dense, but packed a great message and story. I didn't fly through it like I do with many things I tend to read but this was almost preferred. It gave me a chance to really take in the weight of what these characters were going through and helped me to better see things through their eyes. It's not quite a dystopian kind of novel, but it reads similarly. As such, it takes some getting used to in terms of tone simply because they setting in which they are inhabiting is totally unlike the world that we are used to.

My Rating: I give it FOUR STARS, which I would be tempted to bump up to the full five if it weren't for the occasionally confusing changes in perspective. Where some books written in this way denote the change in narrator at the beginning of a section or chapter, this one just picks up and you, as the reader, are left to figure out which story line we are looking at now. I ultimately got somewhat accustomed to it and it didn't bother me that much, but if I were the type of person who only read a chapter or so per day this might be confusing enough that it would affect my comprehension.

Who should read it?: If you like dystopian stories or books in which the characters are inhabiting an alternate environment, then I really think you would like this one. I know that a lot of book clubs have enjoyed Station Eleven simply because there is SO MUCH that is able to be discussed. It's not terribly long and it's fun in a way that is different from most things. If you're looking for a good book that will leave you thinking (and feeling thankful!), this is an excellent choice.

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About Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel

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Emily St. John Mandel was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York.

She is the author of five novels, including The Glass Hotel (spring 2020) and Station Eleven (2014.) Station Eleven was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Aw ...more