Name: Mike Engel's review of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Item: Station Eleven
Rating: 3.5
Author: Mike Engel

Emily St. John Mandel

An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells 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. 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, The Glass Hotel, available now.

A novel

Station Eleven

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.

Zachary Roberts

We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points of origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and then looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the sub-stations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines. 

Gemma

"It just doesn't make sense," Elizabeth insisted. "Are we supposed to believe that civilization has just come to an end?"

"Well," Clark offered, "it was always a little fragile, wouldn't you say?"

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.

Mike Engel

During the pandemic, someone said that being an artist is useless. They’re not essential workers, and there's no way to make money from art, as no one would spend their money on art. But I argued that art is what makes him go on during these dark times. All the things he’s consuming are art, made by artists who may or may not be starving but they kept on doing art anyway. Sure, people will spend money on food first, but when their needs are fulfilled, it is art they reach out for. I don’t think he understood what I meant at the time. He seem to be an aspiring artist on survival mode. I hope he’s doing well now.

This is what’s going through my mind while reading parts of Station Eleven. The world they knew has ended but art is what pushed them to keep on living in this dark new world. The written words, music, visual art, and poetry. It is still a world worth living.

Nate

During the pandemic, someone said that being an artist is useless. They’re not essential workers, and there's no way to make money from art, as no one would spend their money on art. But I argued that art is what makes him go on during these dark times. All the things he’s consuming are art, made by artists who may or may not be starving but they kept on doing art anyway. Sure, people will spend money on food first, but when their needs are fulfilled, it is art they reach out for. I don’t think he understood what I meant at the time. He seem to be an aspiring artist on survival mode. I hope he’s doing well now.

This is what’s going through my mind while reading parts of Station Eleven. The world they knew has ended but art is what pushed them to keep on living in this dark new world. The written words, music, visual art, and poetry. It is still a world worth living.

This was my second time reading from Emily St. John Mandel. Although I did like Sea of Tranquility more than Station Eleven, I must say this has much to recommend it.

If the writing seems less "polished" - if I might say so, when comparing it to Sea of Tranquility - and at times the authorial purpose is much more evident, I still liked reading this most of the time and it grew on me as the story went. On the other hand, some of the best parts of the novel are very specific moments where the author writes a character's heart straight into you.

The plot is a conjunction of multiple threads that meet, through time, at the mirror point that is the day of the pandemic. There's a flux of growing and diminishing entropy that one feels while following many stories. The world had the global shock, but each person had a very different voyage, not always parallel. 

The characters have moments when one feels for them, for their plight, their chaos,  their existencial losses, for their simple aims and purpose.

Emily St. John Mandel doesn't teach the apocalypse, the post-apocalypse or the impeachable failures of humanity, as much as she explores possibility - hope and fear, salvation and doom, choice and contingency - and imagines how much good and bad can come from who we are now and who we could become in a short moment, if our lives had a chance or a forced upheaval.

André Nóbrega

This was my second time reading from Emily St. John Mandel. Although I did like Sea of Tranquility more than Station Eleven, I must say this has much to recommend it.

If the writing seems less "polished" - if I might say so, when comparing it to Sea of Tranquility - and at times the authorial purpose is much more evident, I still liked reading this most of the time and it grew on me as the story went. On the other hand, some of the best parts of the novel are very specific moments where the author writes a character's heart straight into you.

The plot is a conjunction of multiple threads that meet, through time, at the mirror point that is the day of the pandemic. There's a flux of growing and diminishing entropy that one feels while following many stories. The world had the global shock, but each person had a very different voyage, not always parallel. 

The characters have moments when one feels for them, for their plight, their chaos,  their existencial losses, for their simple aims and purpose.

Emily St. John Mandel doesn't teach the apocalypse, the post-apocalypse or the impeachable failures of humanity, as much as she explores possibility - hope and fear, salvation and doom, choice and contingency - and imagines how much good and bad can come from who we are now and who we could become in a short moment, if our lives had a chance or a forced upheaval.

Added The Glass Hotel to my wishlist.

a cautionary tale about the dangers of single parenting and religious fanaticism. i found SoT to be much more interesting, although both novels had the effect of me checking how many more pages i had left and sighing in exasperation, and then actually reaching the end and wishing there was more depth to the tale. i loved SoT for its simplicity (chekhov’s gun as a storytelling device felt natural), and though SE had the same satisfaction of every character’s narrative falling together, as awfully pedestrian as this will sound: i was simply bored. 

That fact that this was written before Covid is terrifying, the fact that I keep expecting zombies to walk out shows I've watched too much The Walking Dead. Another brilliant, brain bending read from Emily St John Mandel, a master writer at knitting together different storylines and making you go ohhhhh! 

Beth Bartholomew

I really liked this book… not because of anything spectacular or dramatic… it just resonated to me. Mostly a depressing book. 

Jennifer Palmer

The plot isn't original in itself, but I loved how everything came together in the end. I also appreciated the use of different means to tell the story (letters, interviews, comic books lines...)

Really wanted to love this, but found it a real struggle.  I found the narrator boring and uninteresting which i think switched me completely off! 

Aims

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.

Daisy Marmion

beautiful!!! each other is all we have!!!

Flora Ossenfort

This is one of the few books that I’ve finished and felt like reading again someday. It’s beautifully written - especially for an apocalyptic book! Great plot twist too. 

Harlee K

I liked the idea of this book so much, but I just did not connect to the way the book was written. I spent a lot of time wondering about what the overall point of the book was and by the time the end came around I was startled by it. It felt very sudden and out of nowhere to me and just didn’t leave me with any kind of closure. I think this would make a very interesting tv show, but as a book it was lacking for me. 

I had trouble getting into this book. It was a day in the life style book and I just felt like I was staring through a window at the craziness of the dystopian world, but there wasn’t much plot to the story.

Amanda 

I have so much to say about this book and goddamn is the human spirit incredible

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

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.

Mike Engel &
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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