Book Review: STATION ELEVEN by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


"What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty."
Well no wonder this novel won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award! I didn't notice that tears had been running down my face until I closed the book and had to turn in for the night, and noticed my pillow was wet.

It's THAT kind of book. The kind that will linger in your memory forever, because it portrays a reality that just might happen. But also, it gives us hope. It's a book that celebrates everything about the human condition... our pettiness, our hardheadedness... and the triumph of the human soul over Armageddon.

It starts with a famous actor dying onstage, during a performance of Shakespeare's King Lear. "Just now, he was doing the thing he loved best in the world," says an eye witness who tries to save him, but fails.

And on that night, a deadly virus ("The Georgia Flu") spreads all around the world, killing 99.99% of the population.

"Everyone else died, I walked, I found the Symphony."

The world collapses. And the remaining 00.01% struggle to survive. Others find shelter in supermarkets and towns. Others, with religious cults. But our protagonists are the members of the Traveling Symphony, who go all over North America, performing Beethoven and Shakespeare to all who would listen. "Because survival is insufficient."

Emily St. John Mandel shifts time, character with each chapter, but is always coherent, and weaves together all the loose threads in one magnificent sunburst of a masterpiece. Rarely are end of the world scenarios so horribly presented, and yet, so beautifully, too.

Yes, all things come to an end. But the biggest blessing of all is to be doing the things we love, surrounded by the people we love most, until the very last.



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