The latest book to have been sat around in ‘the pile’. I must admit that the subject matter is not the happiest, nor even that original: my first thoughts were of the Mad Max movies, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Stephen King’s The Stand, the Tank Girl comics and the story/film A Boy and his Dog, although there’s little in the way of technology here.
However, having read it, it must be said that Station Eleven is a stunning novel.
Station Eleven is told around the lives of six people, about an apocalypse and the consequences afterwards. The Georgia Flu (that’s Russia, not US) is a killer-flu virus that spreads rapidly and is deadly to 99% of the people who catch it. Most are dead in less than a week.
The story begins with TV and film star Arthur Leander dying of a heart attack whilst performing King Lear onstage in Toronto. From this, the plot ripples outwards to other characters connected with Leander, shifting between quite diverse lifestyles, both before and after the global killer-flu pandemic. Jeevan Chaudhary, an ex-journalist, now trainee paramedic, attempts to resuscitate Arthur onstage but then afterwards finds himself in a city with a rapidly spreading and fatal pandemic. Miranda Carroll is the first wife of Arthur’s. Kirsten Raymonde is an actress who was on the stage when she was very young and onstage with Arthur Leander when he died. Clark Thompson is a Brit who went to school with Arthur and can probably be regarded as his best friend.
The plot moves through these characters, between the past (the time of the pandemic and Arthur’s life before it) and the present (our future) twenty years on. Much of the tale is focused on Kirsten and her life twenty years after the pandemic. Now as part of The Travelling Symphony, a peripatetic group (to me rather like the circus troupe in Silverberg’s Valentine’s Castle) we see the world after the event, as the troupe travels from survivor’s town to survivor’s town. Still in a state of post-apocalyptic shock, the world finds the company’s presentations of Shakespeare and music concerts a comforting diversion from the hardship of the virus-ravaged world.
What I realised about halfway through is that the book works on a deeper level than I expected. What this shift between the past (our present) and the present (our future) does is emphasise how much life has changed, how much we have lost or perhaps taken for granted. The book emphasises this by its matter-of-fact exposition of life-changing events.
Station Eleven sneakily becomes a book that questions our own views on life, on celebrity and art culture, and makes us think about the value of existence and the things we lose, and what really matters in life – relationships rather than materialistic goods. It made me realise just what we would lose should such horrible events occur, but also what was important in life.
Given its rather grim setting, you might expect the book to be hard going. Personally, when I started (and perhaps the reason that put me off it to start with) I was worried that it was going to be unremittingly bleak, as I found The Road. However, it must be said that Station Eleven, whilst admittedly having those scary events, has humour there too.
Even though Station Eleven deals with the near-end of the world, the feeling at the end is actually one of optimism and relief. For in spite of everything that happens, despite the worst that this story can show, there is within people who are good and, most importantly in a novel, make us interested in their survival. As readers we want them to succeed – a feeling that’s not easy to create when you look at what has gone before.
It is a tale that looks back as well as forward – remembering and valuing what used to be, as well as setting up a different, yet plausible, future.
This one just made it into my ‘best of’ list for 2014, being the last book of the year I expect to read for review, but once I picked it up, it was un-put-downable. A book about the end of the world, read at the end of the year. Rather appropriate, (some might say serendipitous) that.
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Published by Picador, September 2014
384 pages
ISBN: 978-1447268963
Mark Yon, December 2014
Interesting to read about the reasons you left this on the pile for so long. I have to admit, that despite the praise, this is not generally the subject matter in science fiction that excites me. I like hearing that it has some humor and an optimistic thread, and given that it may be on awards lists I’m tempted to go ahead and give it a read.
Thanks Carl. Yeah, I have read a lot of post-apocalyptic SF, so I take your point. Why didn’t I pick it up earlier? Still not sure. Other review stuff kept pushing it back, and I just had this impression it might just be *too* depressing. But actually it wasn’t. As for the humour – well, it’s there, but it is quite wry. It would be wrong if I’ve given the impression that it’s a barrelful of laughs. But I grinned more than I thought I would.
Generally whenever I do read post-apocalyptic, or dystopic, science fiction I like it. I just want something that has that optimistic thread, that sense of hope, and not something that is bleak for the sake of being bleak. I suspect I would like this one.
I keep on hearing so much praise for this book, and your review is yet another reminder that I should get to it. I am also glad to hear that it isn’t as depressingly bleak as it could be too!