Station Eleven

Title: Station Eleven
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Published: September 9, 2014 by Knopf
Pages: 336
Source: Purchased
Rating: 4/5
Goodreads

One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.

Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten's arm is a line from Star Trek: "Because survival is insufficient." But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.

Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

My review: I'm very late to the party in reading this one. I've had it on my tbr pile for a while, and when I found out that the author was speaking at the Boston book festival, that was motivation to pull this one off the shelf. Overall I really liked this book. It's not really something that I tend to gravitate to (most of the dystopian novels I've read have been YA), but I was very intrigued by the end of the world concept. So intrigued, that I kind of wish there was more of that storyline, and not so much of the traveling troupe. I really enjoyed reading about the way the characters who were left (both during and after the epidemic flu), coped within their surroundings. Jeevan and his brother, who were holed up in his apartment watching the chaos out the window, and later, those who end up at an abandoned airport. I found the troupe to be rather boring, and particularly didn't care for the violence associated with some of their journey. The story does jump back and forth in time, but it was fairly easy to keep up with. I liked the writing style, there were some beautifully written passages. It's interesting to note that this is the first (and probably the only, from what she said at the book festival) foray into dystopian from Ms. Mandel. I admit to not having read any of her previous work, but I would like to someday.

Fascinating story about the end of the world as we know it, and the few who are left behind. Loved the survivor stories, but the Shakesperean troupe was not my favorite storyline.

Emily St. John Mandel (seen here with Sandra Newman) at the Boston book festival.