Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
I read this book back when it first came out in 2015. I had a "meh" reaction at the time. I reread it recently because I've seen so many rave reviews. What I had missed on the first read?
The premise of this book is that a pandemic sweeps the world with incredible speed. The flu devastates the entire world and civilization collapses. In our current neverending-Covid world, Station 11 seems both more and less real. Maybe it's because our collapse is happening but in slow motion.
The characters in this book are all related somehow. It’s a six-degrees-of-separation thing, but each character is related to the others with only one or two things separating them. There are many, many characters to keep track of. For example, Kirsten is a young girl when the pandemic happens. She’s an extra in a stage production of King Lear. The lead actor, Arthur, has a heart attack and dies right on the stage. Arthur’s various family members become central to the plot. Sure, why not, 99% of the population dies, but everyone that has something to do with Arthur survives. Sounds legit.
It's an interesting device but feels contrived. No matter how I tried, I couldn't care much about any of them. Tyler, Arthur’s son, becomes incredibly important toward the end of the book. His character is (putting it kindly) emotionally disturbed. How did he go off the rails? We should know because we have a sketch of his childhood, but that's all. All righty then.
I can recommend this book to someone who can suspend disbelief regarding the unlikely circumstances in the book.
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