Emily St. John Mandel: Station Eleven (2014)
557 pages
English language
Published Oct. 29, 2014
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 …
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.
In a future in which a pandemic has left few survivors, actress Kirsten Raymonde travels with a troupe performing Shakespeare and finds herself in a community run by a deranged prophet. The plot contains mild profanity and violence.
excellent prediction of a pandemic (a little overkill)
good story with a great time arc and an excellent web of characters
a little too bougie
Content warning minor detail, might not spoil anything
I liked this book. It's kind of low key or modest, but it's also kind of haunting; and it just covers so much life. I think the web of relationships is clearly entertaining.
Beautiful. Usually I dislike narratives that jump perspectives and time frames, but Mandel does it in a way that feels meaningful rather than a gimmick or ploy to keep the reader's attention. Her parallelism and observations in both character dialogue and narrative feel like poetry.
This book is a meditation on isolation, endings, and human nature.
I feel like this book happened in the same universe as Lily Brooks-Dalton's "Good Morning, Midnight," where a man waiting to die in the arctic outlives the rest of humanity (save the returning crew of the first manned ship to Jupiter.)
Excellent piece of dystopian fiction. Unnerving. Insightful. Entertaining. Enjoyed it throughly. I would not hesitate to recommend this book.
