Yzabel / October 7, 2014

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time-from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains-this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

Review:

(I received a free copy courtesy of NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

A strange read, one that didn’t seem to have that much of a plot in itself, but that kept me fascinated and enthralled all the same. This is clearly one of those “hard to explain” cases. In other circumstances, I might have found more faults with this book… but I just didn’t, or when I did, they didn’t register with me full-force.

For instance, the Georgian Flu that wiped off 99% of the world population was handled more as a pretext than as a deeply researched medical possibility. And it’s true: from a purely scientific point of view, I don’t think the situation as a whole was handled in a really believable way. When you stop to think about it and consider things logically, it had quite its lot of holes. (E.g.: some people seemed immune, while others remained cooped up in their shelters for weeks… but when they got out, why didn’t they catch the flu? Was it gone, and if yes, why? If not, then did it mean they were immune?).

However, the atmosphere permeating the novel made up for those kinds of details at which I would normally raise an eyebrow. Granted, I did raise an eyebrow—then went on enjoying the prose all the same. Perhaps because I read much of the Severn Airport part while in an actual airport and plane, and was thus fully immersed? Or perhaps because of the Station Eleven story within the story (now that was a comics I’d definitely like to read). Or because the characters’ stories, while not so exceptional, were tied together in a way that just clicked with me. (I tend to enjoy plots that jump between different time periods, present and past… I know this doesn’t work so well for lots of readers. Well, it does for me.)

At the end, some mysteries remain. Where is the Symphony going? What’s with the new grid? What happened to Elizabeth? Is anyone going to ever discover who was the unknown man who tried to save Arthur, and what became of him? In a way, not getting those answers was annoying; on the other hand, I’m not sure having them would be essential to my enjoyment of this novel.

It could have been better. It wasn’t. Yet I connected with it nonetheless. It’s quite strange, indeed.