Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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.

Enjoyed it enough to continue reading it - some exciting moments, not sure i'd recommend it particularly to anyone else though

That's. Not. How. It. Works. That's not how ANY of it works.

You know that one relative, they're streamofconsciousnessing, you're nodding, uh huh, your smile frozen in a rictus, your eyes trying not to express please please please stop? This is a whole book like that. No quantum chakras or alien abductions, thank FSM, but every few pages there was a moment that made me pause and wonder, does this writer have any clue how the world works? Fundamental misunderstandings of just sooooo many concepts: cultural, social, biological, physical, probably more I missed. At one point involving basic outdoor logistics G. muttered “I don't think the author has ever been camping.”

Okay, those are quibbles. If the story had been great I would chuckle and shake my head and enjoy. But the story centered around a handful of characters who were briefly connected—sometimes flimsily—in the pre-apocalypse world, now surviving twenty years later, with glimpses into their lives Before. The reader is supposed to form a bond with these characters, maybe? This reader didn't. I found nearly all of them affectless and difficult to believe; a bad combination. And the story... well, let's call it “contrived.” Anyhow. I finished, and am glad it's over.

(Side note, I've picked up an interesting habit from friend A.: on books that have been recommended to me, I no longer even read their blurb, just dive right in. So I had no idea about the very premise, the whole pandemic thing, nothing. Not sure I would've started it if I had known.)

EDIT: few days later: I figured it out. It's nostalgia porn: many scenes are “oh, didn't we have it good” or “we should make the Internet and movie celebrities a core part of what we teach our ten-year-olds.” I found all that stuff weird, but now it makes sense.

I had never heard of this book so I had no expectations. I only read it because I participate in my library's adult book club. My feelings about this book are conflicted. On one hand I liked it, but on the other I didn't. When I read the synopsis I got excited. I love dystopian/post-apocalyptic books. I feel as though I was cheated. Don't get me wrong it's beautifully written, but I think the synopsis lied to me.

This reads like a series of novellas. I hate novellas because just as soon as you get hooked on the stories/characters the stories end. That's how I would describe the timeshifting. There was one character in particular I loved from the beginning of the book, but I didn't get to read anymore about him until chapter 27. Characters I'm certain I was supposed to care about I didn't.

I love how interconnected it all was though. I just wish we could've gotten there with more plot and action. I was super disappointed by the "big" scene with the Prophet. All that build up for nothing to really happen in the end.

Not that it matters but I absolutely hate Shakespeare so I didn't enjoy those parts.

If I were describing this book I'd say it's literature meets chick lit meets dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction. I'm still glad I read it though and I can't wait to discuss it at book club next month.