From the Bookshelf of The Sword and Laser…

Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel

Start date: July 1, 2015

Finish date: July 31, 2015

Why we're reading this: Won the poll: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...…more
[close] Won the poll: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...

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May 14, 2015 John Wiswell rated it liked it

One of those interesting apocalyptic novels that tries to use the devastation as a lens to examine who we are as people. A plague has wiped most of us out, you see, and we never got our act back together. We follow a troop of traveling actors who preserve classic plays as conservatively as they can, in an obvious attempt to cling to the static. Culture still exists as little pockets, patches of farmers, camps in airports and fast food joints. The idea of people trying to entertain, preserving es One of those interesting apocalyptic novels that tries to use the devastation as a lens to examine who we are as people. A plague has wiped most of us out, you see, and we never got our act back together. We follow a troop of traveling actors who preserve classic plays as conservatively as they can, in an obvious attempt to cling to the static. Culture still exists as little pockets, patches of farmers, camps in airports and fast food joints. The idea of people trying to entertain, preserving escapism and the ideas of the pre-plague world.

Station Eleven glows in the post-apocalyptic mundane. Traveling while hungry, uncertain of the next stop, left to chatter with our fellow actors about the food we miss, the slang that no longer works ("shoot you an e-mail"?), and the attempts at love that are too slippery to hold onto. We get frequent flashbacks to their old lives, when newspapers cared for some of these actors enough to gossip about them, though today those papers only line clothing. There's a stark contrast between their existential work in the damaged present, and the ennui of the old modern world, that's never quite resolved.

Mandel is a strong enough sentence-by-sentence writer that I happily read through 250 pages of this one day in airports. Many of the vignettes flow well, but it stagnates as actors disappear in the wilderness only to lead to little novelty or plot. Station Eleven has very Literary sensibilities, and Literary fiction has an uncomfortable relationship with plot and conflict.

Our prime antagonist is The Prophet, a cult leader who is entirely defined by turning men into hunters and women into sex slaves. It's a tired trope, and even when it's violent, is boring in its lack of observation and empathy for what happened in the cult. It's the biggest example of the novel's problem: it is strong when little is going on, and loses its grasp on critical interior life in favor of flash whenever it gets moving. This is the same problem in the flashbacks, when two characters discuss how a tell-all book will damage their lives. Suddenly the narrative insight shrinks and it's all about angst, not creative solutions or dissection of what we do to each other.

I can see why some people loved it, and why others can't stand it. It's in a middle ground between Genre agency-based writing and Literary insight-based. It's successful enough that I wish it had more of one of the other.
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May 27, 2017 travelgirlut rated it really liked it

Wow. This book was not what I was expecting, at all. I thought it would be just another apocalypse story, and I've read a lot of those. But this is really a story about people and friendship and relationships and figuring out life in general, and it just so happens to be set on the backdrop of a world full of death and destruction. The timing for me and this book was perfect. I may not have loved it just anytime, but right now the mood and feel of this story were perfect for me. I was not ready ...more

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Apr 05, 2015 Beth rated it really liked it

Shelves: friend-bookclub, tuesday-book-club, sf, foolscap-club

August Foolscap book club

This is not quite SF. It's definitely an SF concept, and in fact can comfortably take its place among other post-apocalyptic stories. But its interest lies elsewhere. In fact, it reads more like a book in which magic has died -- the characters don't seem aware that technology was created by people and that they can work to make simpler versions of this. Like, the power grid is down but no one attempts windmills or water power or steam. They wonder whether to teach their ...more

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May 03, 2015 Joanna rated it really liked it

Shelves: post-apocalyptic

This is a story from multiple perspectives that jumps back and forth through time, before and after a flu has killed 99% of humanity. It should be very dark, it should like The Road and I should feel gutted because it's so lonely and horrifying. Sometimes it is all of those things but mostly it's not. The writing is so lovely and at times it reminds me of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake but with a less depressing view of humanity -- this is elegant and hopeful. I didn't love the ending, it felt ...more

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Apr 27, 2015 Rob Cannon rated it really liked it

Interesting for a post-apocalyptic novel in that it focuses on the interrelationships of the characters before and after the "end of the world" instead of the survival porn that permeates the genre. ...more

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Aug 06, 2016 JoyinaBook rated it liked it

3.5 Stars if I could. This book is so well loved by so many readers I respect but for me is was just ok. Not bad but not memorable. I LOVED the premise but couldn’t connect with the characters which is really important for me.

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