Emily St. John Mandel

The sudden death of a Hollywood actor during a production of King Lear marks the beginning of the world's dissolution, in a story told at various past and future times from the perspectives of the actor and four of his associates. By the author of The Lola Quartet. 50,000 first printing.

Station Eleven

Jamie Griffin

hell is the absence of the people you long for.

Uyirmei

“No one ever thinks they’re awful, even people who really actually are. It’s some sort of survival mechanism.”

...only the dishonorable leave when things get difficult.

She knows there are traps everywhere that can make her cry, she knows the way she dies a little every time someone asks her for change and she doesn’t give it to them means that she’s too soft for this world or perhaps just for this city, she feels so small here.

I loved it and I always wanted to escape.

Emiley Jones

She was thinking about the way she’d always taken for granted that the world had certain people in it, either central to her days or unseen and infrequently thought of. How without any one of these people the world is a subtly but unmistakably altered place, the dial turned just one or two degrees.

Those previous versions of herself were so distant now that remembering them was almost like remembering other people, acquaintances, young women whom she’d known a long time ago, and she felt such compassion for them. “I regret nothing,” she told her reflection in the ladies’ room mirror, and believed it

He found he was a man who repented almost everything, regrets crowding in around him like moths to a light. This was actually the main difference between twenty-one and fifty-one, he decided, the sheer volume of regret.

Hell is the absence of the people you long for.

…during what seemed at the time like adulthood and seemed in retrospect like a dream.

National Book Award finalist, New York Times bestseller, Globe and Mail bestseller, and a Best Book of the Year in The Globe and Mail, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Time magazine Day One The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%. Week Two Civilization has crumbled. Year Twenty A band of actors and musicians, called the Travelling Symphony, move through the territories of a changed world, performing concerts and Shakespeare at the settlements that have formed. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and it threatens the world every hopeful survivor has tried to rebuild. Moving backward and forward in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: celebrated actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan, a bystander warned about the flu just in time; Arthur's first wife, Miranda; Arthur's oldest friend, Clark; Kirsten, an actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed "prophet." Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the fragility of life, the relationships that sustain us, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

A Novel

Laura Wilson

Hell is the absence of the people you long for

Natalie Unsinn 

These people who’ve ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. … They’ve done what’s expected of them. They want to do something different but it’s impossible now, there’s a mortgage, kids, whatever, they’re trapped. … High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially. … [They] think work is supposed to be drudgery punctuated by very occasional moments of happiness, but when I say happiness, I mostly mean distraction. 

Naomi J.

But the night sky was a wash of light in Galileo’s age, and it was a wash of light now. The era of light pollution had come to an end… “I was here for the end of electricity.” The thought sent shivers up Clark’s spine.

Outside, the world was ending, and snow continued to fall.

casey

She was thinking about the container-ship fleet on the horizon. The crew out there wouldn't have been exposed to the flu. Too late to get to a ship herself now, but she smiled at the thought that there were people in this reeling world who were safe.

Miranda opened her eyes in time to see the sunrise. A wash of violent color, pink and streaks of brilliant orange, the container ships on the horizon suspended between the blaze of the sky and the water aflame, the seascape bleeding into confused visions of Station Eleven, its extravagant sunsets and its indigo seas. The lights of the fleet fading into morning, the ocean burning into sky.

But the man who walked in under low gray skies seemed less dangerous than stunned. He was dirty, of indeterminate age, dressed in layers of clothes, and he hadn't shaved in a long time. He appeared on the road with a gun in his hand, but he stopped and let the gun fall to the pavement when Tyrone shouted for him to drop it. He raises his hands over his head and stared at the people gathering around him.

Everyone had questions. He seemed to struggle for speech. His lips moved silently, and he had to clear his throat several times before he could speak. Clark realized that he hadn't spoken in some time.

"I was in the hotel," he said finally. "I followed your footprints in the snow." There were tears on his face.

"Okay," someone said, "but why are you crying?"

"I'd thought I was the only one," he said.

Dylan Williams

Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest. He died three weeks later on the road out of the city.

Beautiful layering of character storylines

✧༺♥༻✧

Aeryn Emmerich-Wise

** spoiler alert **
           Ok I think I am far enough removed from finishing this book I can write a coherent review.

The minute I finished this book, I called my friend sobbing and left a two minute voice memo about how this book was such a beautiful and hopeful picture of humanity. The idea that these three main characters - who had so little in common, who were so peripheral to each other - could impact each other's lives so much? The idea that even after all these years, human connection is not only vital to survival, but necessary?

I was reading this while we watched the Last of Us on HBO, which I think makes for a great pairing. Joel learned throughout the series (and video game) that human connection is not just something that you live with, it's in fact, the only thing that makes life worth living. Our relationships with other humans are the reason humanity fights so hard to stay alive, especially during the apocalypse. 

At the end, when Kirsten leaves a copy of Station 11 at the museum of civilization, all I could think about was how she never had anyone else who she could discuss any of it with. Then she stumbled upon Clark. This is what made me sob, perhaps, the idea that she had finally found someone else she could just talk to about her favorite comic! Imagine! Living in a world where art is so few and far between that it can't even be discussed because nobody knows about it! Or the people who do know are far away, out of reach...

After putting this book down, I knew it as one of my favorite books I've ever read. What a beautiful, hopeful story about the end of the world. At least if this happens, I will know one thing: Survival is insufficient.

Emily St John Mandel

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse--the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. Soon to be a Max Original Limited Series on HBO Max. A National Book Award Finalist - A PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end. Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band's existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed. Look for Emily St. John Mandel's new novel, Sea of Tranquility, coming in April 2022!

Station Eleven (Television Tie-In)

Sohini Roy

lala

I had this book on my reading list since early this year, but I ended up watching the Series adaptation first, then read the book. I got a well-conditioned second hand copy of Station Eleven. I remember reading the first couple of pages on my e-reader some months ago, but decided to stop reading because it starts with King Lear and a play. Both of things I wasn’t immediately interested in. But I got the motivation to read further after falling in love with the series adaptation. Station Eleven imagines a world where a pandemic took over the world (sounds familiar?) but this Georgia Flu pandemic takes only mere seconds for transmission. We see different characters in different point in time whose lives are interconnected in some ways. Unconsciously I can’t stop comparing the book to the series, and while there are big differences I think it was taken for good reasons. In Year 20 after the Georgia Flu Pandemic, The Traveling Symphony is a group of actors and musicians traveling through Canada, stopping by to the newly formed cities to perform Shakespeare. The book also delves into the characters lives before the pandemic. While I think the series “hits” deeper, the book serve the story in a different, more poetic light. As to why the book is named Station Eleven, that’s one thing you have to discover yourself by reading it…

I give Station Eleven 4 stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Grace Edwards

Claire Jorgensen

Went into this one blind and found a novel that is eclectic and human, imaginative yet grounded. It's a book you should read to process the pandemic, but also because it's simply good reading.

elizabeth

amira

** spoiler alert **
           It’s a great book but I wished the ending was described. What happened to the people after the Georgia Flu when they found electricity again? That sort of thing.

Avery

It wasn�t bad, just wasn�t really what i was expecting and I�m probably not �literary� enough for it xD

(5/5) station eleven (o estación once) se desarrolla en un mundo post apocalíptico que se vio asolado por una terrible enfermedad fatal, la gripe de georgia. en un relato que intercala el pasado con el presente, vemos como las vidas de aquellos afortunados que lograron sobrevivir cambian drásticamente para adaptarse a un mundo sin electricidad, sin comodidades y, sobre todas las cosas, sin leyes.

ya desde la premisa el libro me había enganchado: una caravana de actores y músicos, la sinfonía viajera, que intentan traer el arte a un mundo en crisis, viajando por las ciudades y representando obras de Shakespeare. en un principio creí que el libro iba a ser narrado únicamente desde este punto de vista, por lo que las idas y venidas durante todo el libro, tanto entre personajes como entre épocas fue una inesperada sorpresa, pero que acabó siendo un acierto fenomenal. cada personaje aporta a la trama positivamente, pues nos hace ver el mundo desde distintas perspectivas que nada tienen que ver una con la otra. lo que más me maravilló es que en un principio cada personaje parece haber sido elegido al azar, pero hay algo que los une a todos por igual, la figura de Arthur Leander. a pesar de que algunos de ellos ni siquiera se conocen entre sí, este personaje es el punto en común que cada uno de ellos tiene con el otro, y es magnífica la manera que tiene la autora de ir uniendo los cabos para que la trama acabe completamente cerrada.

el libro en sí no tiene una trama tan marcada, un suceso problemático en sí más allá de la existencia de este mundo apocalíptico, pero aún así creo que es un libro que mantiene al lector en todo momento interesado, en parte por el mundo que plantea, por los personajes y por la pluma excepcional de St. John Mandel, que hace de la historia una lectura fluida e inmensamente entretenida.

ahora me queda pendiente ver la miniserie que hicieron basada en el libro, pero si mantiene al menos parte de la escencia del libro, estoy segura que me va a encantar.

Was happy to read it, but nothing special really happened in it for me. The plot never seemed to move forward enough. I only really liked one character. Didn't care much for the ending. No regrets, but not recommending this one.

Martha F.

One of my recent favorite books. This is the post-apocalyptic world as I prefer to imagine it. Beautiful and engrossing.

Pedro Figueiredo

chloe rae

Man, I picked the CRAZIEST time to read this book.
Currently living in NYC, the coronavirus is talked about every day. Everywhere I look is another news alert or article, and we have daily talks about it at home and at work. When I picked up this book 2 weeks ago, I had a very vague sense what it was about but I just had this feeling that now was the time to finally read it. It's been on my TBR for forever, and the universe was telling me to read it next.
When I found out what this book was about, like ACTUALLY about, I laughed for a bit. Because this book is literally about the world after a flu-like pandemic killed off 99% of the population. 
I thought it was about shakespearean actors, which it is, but I had somehow glazed over the part of the synopsis about the "civilization coming to an end" after a "flu pandemic". I almost had to put it down several times, the subject matter hitting too close to home and feeling to personal/scary. But also, in a strange way, this book calmed me down a bit. This book is obviously fiction, and the coronavirus is nothing like this flu in the story. This extreme case in this made-up world is not what's happening here, now. The stuff in this story would never happen in real life (I mean, it is dramatized fiction) and it was almost kind of nice to see what wouldn't ever happen. At least with the coronavirus. It calmed me down a bit.
Some of the similarities though? Insane.
Anyway, now for the actual book review. I really loved this. I loved the characters in this story so much. I also wanted MORE from all of them. I feel like we only got to know like 60% of them. I wanted to know so much more. Also, she was still telling us about them like 3 pages before the ending. The format was interesting. I liked it at times, and also found it frustrating at times. I loved learning about all these different people, but I feel like as soon as I got really gripped by a story we'd switch to a different point of view. Sometimes it worked nicely, but most times it was jarring. I also loved all the talk about the new world, but I wanted more about the shakespearean actors! I wanted more talk about the importance of art and theatre! These people literally spend every day performing and I feel like that part was just glossed over. I get that that's just not how the author wanted the story to go and that's ok. I was just a bit bummed.
Also, I totally called how it was going to end. And usually this doesn't matter because I still find the story super interesting, but I just wanted more from the ending.
Overall, a truly beautiful book that just wasn't quite as incredible as I was hoping.

i’m tired of pandemic-themed books but this one is pretty interesting

DAY ONE The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%. WEEK TWO Civilization has crumbled. YEAR TWENTY A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and he threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild. STATION ELEVEN Moving backwards and forwards in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: famous actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan - warned about the flu just in time; Arthur's first wife Miranda; Arthur's oldest friend Clark; Kirsten, a young actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed 'prophet'. Thrilling, unique and deeply moving, this is a beautiful novel that asks questions about art and fame and about the relationships that sustain us through anything - even the end of the world.

Deepika Ramesh

Because survival is insufficient.  

It is not easy to say that. I don’t know the context in which the line appeared in Star Trek: Voyager, episode 122, twenty-three years ago, but we can’t use that expression now without sounding borderline insensitive, as the COVID-19 pandemic goes on, controlling the planet, coercing us to be grateful for every new day that gets added to our lives. However, when Emily St. John Mandel makes it the central theme of Station Eleven, she absolves us of our survivor’s guilt. When it all ends, when we begin again, or when it all ends, when we wait to begin again, we still find comfort in art. When our civilisation collapses, when our existence gets stripped down to hunting and gathering, we don’t simply survive, while that would have been enough, but we seek companionship and community, we look for beauty in everything, and we practise art. The expression makes me believe that I haven’t been greedy, in the last two years, for longing to do something more than surviving, something more than waking up, working, and existing.

After the collapse, The Travelling Symphony in Station Eleven walks across the Great Lakes region, performing Shakespeare, rendering Beethoven, living their days by entertaining those whose lives are momentarily uplifted by their music and art only for them to return to darkness and isolation after the performances. Before the collapse, a bunch of ‘high-functioning sleepwalkers’ gallop around their hyperconnected, fast-paced, seemingly safe and invincible world, dissatisfied and unhappy in their own ways. By flitting between the Before and After worlds, Emily St. John Mandel juxtaposes two realities in Station Eleven (and another in Miranda’s comic books). Station Eleven could have slipped into the argument that demonises modern technology and romanticises a world where there is no electricity, instant communication, and convenient and fast travel. Or, it could have instilled more fear by amplifying violence and atrocities of cult which take place after the collapse. However, Station Eleven does something compassionate by holding that juxtaposition, by building a Museum of Civilisation, and by offering a bright horizon of hope. It encourages us to pay more attention to what we have and how we use them. It shows that survival is everything and that along with the act of survival art persists.

Miranda’s comic books also answer the question that has many answers — why do we read? Her comics are her shadow life, but as the story unfolds, the boundary between the life on Station Eleven in her comic and the lives followed in Station Eleven, the book, blurs. The flickering boundary makes me wonder if that’s why we read, consume art — to pour our existence into a book, an artwork, a piece of music and to discover our identity in them, or for our identity to bleed and merge with them. Perhaps, inefficiency of languages also contributes to our quest, our hunt for metaphors in art, for us to make sense of our lives and our stories, for us to find meaning, and for us to do something, anything more than surviving. Clark Thompson, an organisational psychologist, a curator, the founder of Museum of Civilisation, is a memorable character for me, besides Miranda, in Station Eleven. That’s mainly because we share our suffering — enduring a life that’s eroded by the acidic waves of the corporates and fathoming the emptiness of ‘circle back’, ‘shoot an e-mail’, ‘leverage’, ‘touch base’. Despite how close his life was to sinking into the quicksand of meaninglessness glorified by the corporates, he sought beauty in a paperweight, an orange, and in improbable friendships. Knowing his story lit my heart. That’s all I can try do, too — survive and be waylaid by beauty.

Ryan 

4.5 (formerly 4 stars)

with everything that's been going on around the world, i thought that it would be darkly funny (and ironic) to pick up a book that's about a post-apocalyptic society that happened because of a plague that isn't as horrid at this plague we're going through right now. however, not only did it brings a positive message but it contemplated me into thinking how i want to be remembered and that in the face of crippling humanity, there will shed the light and hope for the future. with an interesting form of storytelling, i think it's something people should pick up (maybe when all of this is subsided).

this book was honestly one of the books on my shelf that was so close to giving away if i didn't read it this year. after reading it and letting it settle on my brain, this has became a hidden gem i will never forget.

Cody Degen

mic shulman

okay i’ve read two of this lady’s books this year and i’m still figuring them out call me back later

Karen E

Yanks

a book that still shines with humanity despite of its post-apocalyptic setting. i would be thinking of it constantly, especially during these hard times. i also  loved how many plot points and characters were interconnected with each other.

Aamna

The writing is beautiful. The plot didn't thrill me.

Jayme Cochrane

Didn't know a thing about this book before reading it. What timing to be reading a story about a deadly global pandemic, during a deadly global pandemic. Couldn't put this one down, highly recommend.

Satyajeet Pal

Could not put this book down. This apocalyptic thriller considers what life could be like in the future. I love the plot and the way the characters are brought together. The role of a few characters is confusing, but I definitely enjoyed the book overall.

Station Eleven

Reviews

Highlights