I don’t read a whole lot of adult novels, but I kept seeing Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, pop up on my social media feeds, and I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did.
This is an adult science fiction book that features a post-apocalyptic world, in which a virus called the Georgia flu wipes out everyone.
Here are three things I enjoyed most about it:
The premise: The Georgia flu wiped everyone from the earth, except for a select few, who learned to survive as our ancestors once survived. It was futuristic but had the feel of a step back in time, because there was no Internet or social media channels or even ways to communicate effectively with other people. The people were all spread out, so the earth wasn’t very populated, or didn’t seem so. It was an interesting premise from which to start a story. There was a traveling symphony that met up with some prophets who claimed there was a reason some people survived and others didn’t. It had a cult-like feel that was both intriguing and disturbing.
The structure: The storyline moved from the future, when the virus had already killed most of the world, to the past, where nothing yet had happened. I found this a very interesting method for the storytelling. While most of the people whose stories were told in the “before” section were no longer alive in the “after,” there were some who had carried on, luckily enough, and it was interesting to see where their travels took them.
The characters: Most of the characters were actors or artists, people who had performed on stage and a woman who was writing a comic book called Station Eleven. This comic book connected all the pieces of the story, even though it didn’t seem like an important part of the story. It was a great symbol that linked past to present.
I was hooked by the opening paragraph:
The king stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored. This was act 4 of King Lear, a winter night at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto. Earlier in the evening, three little girls had played a clapping game onstage as the audience entered, childhood versions of Lear’s daughters, and now they’d returned as hallucinations in the mad scene. The king stumbled and reached for them as they flitted here and there in the shadows. His name was Arthur Leander. He was fifty-one years old and there were flowers in his hair.
The above is an affiliate link. I only recommend books that I personally enjoy. I actually don’t even talk about the books I don’t enjoy, because I’d rather forget I ever wasted time reading them. But if you’re ever curious whether I’ve read a book and whether I liked or disliked it, don’t hesitate to ask.
