Station Eleven in Overdue Podcast

Sep 28, 2014 Anita added it · review of another edition

3 likes · Like

Nov 19, 2014 Janine Corman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopian-fiction, national-book-award-finalist, canadian-setting, third-person-narrative, alternating-points-of-view, book-club, pen-faulkner-finalist

4.5 stars, to be more accurate. This woman can write. She can write so well that I wanted more, which is the only reason I did not give this a 5 star rating. STATION ELEVEN surpasses most dystopian fiction because it is not merely about survival. It's about the survival of art and culture and of human connection. In a way this book seemed more like a novella, because at a mere 333 pages, having 6 POVs does not amount to heavy plot or character for any of the narratives. But like I said, she's th ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Oct 20, 2014 Betty added it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, fiction, 2020, plague-lockdown-2020

2 likes · Like

Feb 05, 2016 Liam Berry rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016

Station Eleven seemed to get great reviews across the board, both upon its release and it the 2014 end of year lists. About a third of the way in I was finding it enjoyable but a little lightweight and wondering just what those reviewers had seen in it, but then the story arcs start to bear fruit, more of the history of the pandemic is shown giving the world a greater depth and, most importantly, the prose really comes alive. St. John Mandel has a kind of gentle style of writing. She will prepar Station Eleven seemed to get great reviews across the board, both upon its release and it the 2014 end of year lists. About a third of the way in I was finding it enjoyable but a little lightweight and wondering just what those reviewers had seen in it, but then the story arcs start to bear fruit, more of the history of the pandemic is shown giving the world a greater depth and, most importantly, the prose really comes alive. St. John Mandel has a kind of gentle style of writing. She will prepare you no more for the discovery of a dead body than she would for a character finding a shiny coin on the floor, almost as if the whole thing is happening one remove away from her senses, but it's very effective and allows the air of melancholy she creates to pervade the text throughout.

I found the book to be thoughtful and meditative and I can see why some critics have queried how best to categorise it. About half of it takes place in a post-pandemic world but the main focus of the book is on the nature of memory and what it would mean to exist in a post-history world. By doing this, by asking who we are without the gadgets and inventions that have come to define the modern age, St. John Mandel turns a spotlight upon the way we live now and asks the equally valid question, what does it mean to exist in an age where we ARE defined by gadgets and inventions. An age in which we owe the way we communicate with our friends and family, with society as a whole, to technology that has come into existence only in the last few decades.

In the body of the post-pandemic story, the book not only has the good manners to take aim at religion and the predatory way in which it ensnares the weak, but also skewers humanistic fatalism and paints it as religion's uneducated little brother, and it does so quite brilliantly. It also triumphs art as intrinsic to our humanity, as something that sets us apart from the animals, but as with the rest of the points made in this book it is done in a passive way, encouraging you to take this idea away from the book but not trying to ram it down our throats.

If I have any criticism of the book it would be that the opening chapters with the Travelling Symphony are a little ill-defined; too many characters popping up, some going by more than one name too soon into their introduction to get a clear picture of them. And I think that there was more room at the end. The book concludes its story-lines in fulfilling ways, don't get me wrong, but I was left feeling like I wouldn't have minded another twenty or thirty pages fleshing out the last hundred. I suppose it is a very fitting way for a book about a travelling theatre company to end though: leave them wanting more. ...more

Like · see review

Jan 27, 2015 Tiffani rated it liked it

Shelves: post-apocalyptic, read-in-2016, lit-explorer-2016, book-riot-2016

Then: Arthur Leander, a famous movie actor, has a heart attack on stage during the performance of King Lear. A trainee paramedic named Jeevan rushes from the audience to the stage, pushes past security and starts performing CPR. Kirsten Raymond, a child actress who was playing the younger version of one of Lear's daughters witnesses Arthur's demise. Just hours earlier Arthur had given the young actress a copy of the first two volumes of a comic book his first ex-wife Miranda had written and draw Then: Arthur Leander, a famous movie actor, has a heart attack on stage during the performance of King Lear. A trainee paramedic named Jeevan rushes from the audience to the stage, pushes past security and starts performing CPR. Kirsten Raymond, a child actress who was playing the younger version of one of Lear's daughters witnesses Arthur's demise. Just hours earlier Arthur had given the young actress a copy of the first two volumes of a comic book his first ex-wife Miranda had written and drawn.

Later that same night Jeevan is on the phone with a doctor friend about to tell him about the crazy night he had at the theater. The doctor interrupts Jeevan and reminds him how he (the doctor) had promised he would tell Jeevan if there was ever a reason to be worried. Now there is a reason to be worried. A 16-year-old girl arrived on a plane from Moscow with flu-like symptoms. Within forty-eight hours she was dead. Other people from the same plane began arriving at the hospital with the same symptoms. They died too, along with the nurse who initially treated the 16-year-old. With that the Georgian Flu pandemic begins. Within weeks the majority of the human population is dead, or so one assumes. The story takes place in North America and pretty soon the east coast can't communicate with people on the west coast of the United States, let alone the rest of the world so who know what happened elsewhere.

Later: It's year 20, as if time started over. Kirsten is part of a troupe of actors and musicians that call themselves the Traveling Symphony. They travel from town to town performing Shakespeare and music. Gasoline goes bad after a few years so now people travel on horseback, or with horses pulling old cars (so no longer the horseless carriages as they were once called), or on their own two feet. At one of their usual stops the Symphony discovers that a once friendly town has been taken over by a strange man calling himself the prophet. The Symphony quickly moves on but it isn't their last encounter with the prophet and his followers.

Elsewhere people have set up a settlement of sorts at the airport. When the pandemic began planes were diverted from their original destination and landed at the nearest airport. Some ended up at the Severn City airport in Michigan. At first people waited for the national guard to show up and do something but after weeks, months, it became clear that no one was coming.

That is pretty much the plot and setting of Station Eleven. The story jumps between the past and the present and from character to character. Over the course of 300 plus pages people die from the flu, violence, and minor ailments and accidents that would have been treated easily before but without hospitals and medicines are now fatal. There are people who remember the old world and children who can't quite conceive of the Internet, telephones, or air conditioning.

I liked this but also wondered what the point was or where it was going. I kept waiting for something more to happen. The story seemed incomplete. It reminded me a little of World War Z, another story about a world wide crisis and how people either die or survive the crisis. That novel tackles the different ways people responded and why. In Station Eleven there is very little of the immediate aftermath of the crisis. Two decades have passed and people are living and surviving and it isn't totally clear how they did it, which made for a less interesting story. This was pleasant but by no means a favorite read. ...more

Like · see review