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Audiobook narrated by Kirsten Potter
An actor collapses on stage during a performance of Shakespeare’s King Lear. An EMT in the audience rushes to his aid. The child actress playing one of Lear’s daughters, Kirsten, is distraught. The snow falling on Toronto gives the city a peaceful look, but the hysteria caused by a spreading plague that kills within days cannot be stopped. Twenty years later, Kirsten is an actress in a troupe of entertainers calling themselves the Traveling Symphony.
In gener ...more
An actor collapses on stage during a performance of Shakespeare’s King Lear. An EMT in the audience rushes to his aid. The child actress playing one of Lear’s daughters, Kirsten, is distraught. The snow falling on Toronto gives the city a peaceful look, but the hysteria caused by a spreading plague that kills within days cannot be stopped. Twenty years later, Kirsten is an actress in a troupe of entertainers calling themselves the Traveling Symphony.
In gener ...more
All style and no substance, this one totally missed the mark for me. I kept waiting for something - I'm not entirely sure what I was waiting for, but I didn't get it. Too many characters & storylines with zero of them giving me any sense of satisfaction.
There was no real sense of dread (even though I hated The Stand, holy shit that opening had me terrified of anyone who sneezed near me for days after reading it), no sense of urgency, no sense of loss. 99% of the world died and ... eh. Although ...more
There was no real sense of dread (even though I hated The Stand, holy shit that opening had me terrified of anyone who sneezed near me for days after reading it), no sense of urgency, no sense of loss. 99% of the world died and ... eh. Although ...more
I love Emily St. John Mandel's writing and how well-woven her stories are. There is the perfect mix of dark in her realistic dystopians. I also enjoy how her books blend into one another. I'm going to have to go back and do some rereading just to find all the little Easter eggs.
This story is something altogether unique and holds a great power to it in just initiating thought. It really did make me look introspectively, which doesn't happen to me a lot when reading fiction. So major kudos for th ...more
This story is something altogether unique and holds a great power to it in just initiating thought. It really did make me look introspectively, which doesn't happen to me a lot when reading fiction. So major kudos for th ...more
I had to shelve this book as 'literature' because unlike so many dystopian or post-apocalyptic novels, this one is not in any way plot driven. It was such a breath of fresh air, and it reminded me that it is too easy to spend a book looking for the plot and miss the beauty and poetry of the writing and all of the thought provoking moments in a novel which stand outside of the plot. The book is ostensibly about the arrival of the Georgia Flu which wipes out 99.99% of the world's population over a
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I liked this book. A few years a go I put it on my TBR list; a few months ago I thought, "this is sci-fi? why is this on my list?" and removed it. Then, I had to fill in for the adult book club at work this month...and guess what the book was????
As someone who is not a sci-fi fan AT ALL, I enjoyed this novel. I'm glad I was [forced] to read this. I really, really liked her writing style and the various viewpoints shared from the mysterious narrator, trying to piece it all together. I liked it. M ...more
As someone who is not a sci-fi fan AT ALL, I enjoyed this novel. I'm glad I was [forced] to read this. I really, really liked her writing style and the various viewpoints shared from the mysterious narrator, trying to piece it all together. I liked it. M ...more
This book started out so well and it had my full attention after a few pages, but then it jumped in time and from thereon it fell a little flat for me. Because of the high rating (4,01 at the monent) I had high expectations and I liked the idea behind the book but not the execution. To me it felt like a series of events and stories and it seemed incoherent.
Jan 12, 2016
Michelle
rated it
did not like it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
dissapointing
If someone would be so kind to tell me what the hell was going on in this book I would really appreciate it. Maybe I'm getting old or I was having flashbacks from the early days of college, but I have no idea what the point of this novel was. A lot of things went on, but none of it was all that remarkable. 99% of it was me saying "Who the frig cares?". I read a ton of post apocalyptic novels, this was not that. The author seemed to try to write some sort of mesmerizing literary fiction crap and
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I was not prepared to love this book. I had heard great things about it but when I picked it up and discovered it is of the post-apocalyptic genre I put it right back on the shelf as I'm not much of a fan. Well, darn those challenges, didn't I need a Canadian author or a book set in Canada, so back to the shelf I went.
The apocalypse, in the form of a deadly flu, takes place immediately and 99% of the world's population is done in by the end of the first chapter. The remainder of the book concer ...more
The apocalypse, in the form of a deadly flu, takes place immediately and 99% of the world's population is done in by the end of the first chapter. The remainder of the book concer ...more
4 Stars
This book has been extremely hyped. Some of my very favorite Goodreads reviewers and booktubers love this book. Needless to say, I had very high expectations. This book did not disappoint. Since this is an older book that I’m sure you’ve read tons of reviews for I’ll keep mine short and simple.
The strong points of the book were the characters and the way everything was connected in the end. I truly loved Kristen and I thought the author did a great job writing a believable, strong fema ...more
This book has been extremely hyped. Some of my very favorite Goodreads reviewers and booktubers love this book. Needless to say, I had very high expectations. This book did not disappoint. Since this is an older book that I’m sure you’ve read tons of reviews for I’ll keep mine short and simple.
The strong points of the book were the characters and the way everything was connected in the end. I truly loved Kristen and I thought the author did a great job writing a believable, strong fema ...more
This is not your average “end of days” post-apocalyptic novel. There are no zombies or scenes of violent death. The book's primary characters are connected by a web of coincidence to Arthur Leander, a movie star who dies onstage while playing King Lear the night before a flu epidemic kills pretty much everybody on earth. His death on-stage is witnessed by many, including a child actor named Kristen, who later is part of the Traveling Symphony roaming what is left of civilization. The man who com
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I enjoyed this strange book.
Sep 09, 2014
Katharine
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
sci-fi-fantasy,
dystopian
Rounded up from 3.5
Aug 18, 2014
Pamela
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
dystopian-post-apocalyptic
Jul 26, 2015
Lisa
marked it as to-read
Oct 14, 2015
Mimi
marked it as to-read
