Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
“The bright side of the planet moves toward darkness
And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,
And for me, now as then, it is too much.
There is too much world.”
Czeslw Milosz, The Separate Notebooks
And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,
And for me, now as then, it is too much.
There is too much world.”
Czeslw Milosz, The Separate Notebooks
A very rare five-star review for this stellar, emotional, and frightening (in its literal capacity) book. In Mandel's capable hands, different threads of lives are woven in and around each other before and after a devastating epidemic of the flu. You not only learn about the people after the flu and how they survive, but before -- what made them quintessentially them. This type of book has a high rate of disaster, but Mandel weaves their lives flawlessly.
It all begins, and ends, with Shakespeare – a famous actor reprises the role of King Lear for theatre audiences, only to suffer a heart attack on the stage. Only a few hours later, a devastating flu-like epidemic begins to sweep the globe, killing off 99 percent of the population.
Some of Mandel’s sentences are a brain-full; for example: “Kirsten picked up a couple of mildewed binders to study the stickers and the Sharpie incantations—‘Lady Gaga iz da bomb, ‘Eva + Jason 4 evah,’ I <3 Chris,’ etc.—and on a cooler day she might have spent more time here, interested as always in any clue she could find about the lost world, but the air was foul and still, the heat unendurable, and when August emerged from the men’s room it was a relief to walk out into the sunlight, the breeze, and the chatter of crickets” (39% Kindle version). While rather effusive, Mandel’s poetic prose flows naturally without becoming overly maudlin, even at the end of the world.
I was sad when I reached the end, for more reasons than one, but namely because it was the end of this immersive novel.
Of all the characters, Miranda is my favorite. She let life batter her around and only took charge at the end, but she was the most relatable.
Don’t let this book go unread.
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