One of the most prevalent genre stories is the Post-Apocalyptic tale; our world transformed irrevocably by disease(s), war, nature, zombies, or threats from beyond the globe. One might even suggest that Post-Apocalypse stories are so popular and prevalent they’ve become its own genre , separate and existing along-side Science Fiction. Into this fray enters Station Eleven, Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel’s fourth novel and in an understatement, her break-out novel. As of this writing, the novel recently received the Arthur C. Clarke Award and was short-listed for the National Book Award. In a multi-threaded narrative that, for me, evoked the best elements of the television show Lost, Mandel’s novel begins on the eve of the apocalypse and spins out in both directions, following characters in the years prior to the apocalypse and characters living after 99% of humanity has been killed by the Georgia Flu.
The famous actor Arthur Leander, after years as a Hollywood leading man and box office draw, returns to the stage for a production of King Lear in Toronto. When he dies on stage, the story unfolds in many directions. We learn about Jeevan Chaudhary, the medic who rushes from the audience to the stage to check on the actor. We meet Kirsten Ramonde, the young actress (8 years old) cast as one of Lear’s daughters for this unique performance as. Their narratives spin directly following Leander’s death as civilization collapses (Jeevan) and a decade-and-a-half after the population has dwindled (Kirsten). Mandel also focuses her lens on Leander’s first wife, Miranda and his best friend Clark Thompson
The novel is concerned with the Georgia Flu in the most minimal of senses. Like the smartest of post-apocalyptic fiction, Mandel uses the Flu only as a mechanism to set the story in motion. It is the effects the Flu brings forth in civilization both in the immediacy of the outbreak, and the long-term of the Flu that the story is concerned.
Jeevan’s story traces his path after Leander dies as Jeevan learns of the pending doom through news reports. He fills multiple shopping carts full of supplies to be carted to his brother’s apartment. We learn about Arthur Leander’s past and how he arrived on stage on that fateful night. Kirsten’s story, which takes up a small majority of the narrative, traces her membership in the Traveling Symphony across the barren (of human life) landscape of the Great Lakes region of the United States. The Symphony performs Shakespeare as they travel from town to town and find themselves in an uneasy place when they encounter a group of people led by a man known only as The Prophet. Also mentioned as the Traveling Symphony’s journey progresses is the far off haven of the (fictional) Severn City Airport, where a large collective is said to have taken a foothold resembling civilization.
As George R.R. Martin proclaimed when he stated that Station Eleven was his favorite book from 2014, it is a book that shouldn’t work. The structure is not linear, it veers all over the place and doesn’t make itself immediately clear how everything is connected. That perceived barrier is what makes this such a strong and powerful novel because Mandel so skillfully weaves these narratives and left me at each seeming halting of a specific narrative wanting so much more. So I continued with the “new” narrative in the hopes of coming to a connection point between the seemingly separate narratives only to be fully engrossed in that “new” narrative. Or, in other words, I was wrapped up in what was happening to Kirsten only for Mandel to switch over to a narrative featuring Leander’s first wife Miranda and found myself equally enwrapped in her story.
Station Eleven is also a story about the power of art and how humanity will continue to express and be mystified by art. This couldn’t be more evident with an actor dying on stage or another protagonist as a player in the Traveling Symphony. ….or where the novel gets its title, from a comic book / graphic novel titled Station Eleven depicting humanity in space as a result of a ravaged earth. We see both the creative process and energy that went into the creation of the comic book as well as its long-ranging effects as Kirsten carries a copy around as both a comfort read and remembrance of the World Before. Like the Traveling Symphony itself performing King Lear as Arthur died performing the same play, the graphic novel Station Eleven is a great mirror with which to compare the novel itself.
Furthering that juxtaposition with a focus on the “World Before the Georgia Flu” and the transformed world, Mandel is able to deftly illustrate what makes these two times so much different. Violence(?) and death are daily threats in the post-Georgia Flu world. Before, Celebrity seems to be a focus and how one man’s celebrity – Arthur Leander – affects people close to him in profound ways. We also see the idea of Celebrity still alive post-flu. Though Mandel emphasizes what is lost or no longer of use in the Apocalyptic landscape, she also emphasize the things that will never go away, art, humanity, and hope.
There’s an easy comparison to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, since both novels are about a journey through a dead world, but Station Eleven is far less bleak and filled with a hope. There’s also a nice nod (without naming it) to Justin Cronin’s powerful apocalyptic novel The Passage by one of the characters. So in that sense, as well as other references littered throughout Kirsten Raymonde’s portion of the narrative, Station Eleven is very much a novel aware of its post-apocalyptic roots, bordering on genre-savvy.
What further makes Station Eleven such a compelling novel is what worked so well for Lost: the mysteries surrounding each character’s connections to one other. Mandel is subtle and smart enough a writer who rarely, if ever states through the characters’ voices that “Oh you are X character, you must have known Y character in the World Before.” Who is the prophet? What is Station Eleven? What is at the Severn City airport? No, we make those connections ourselves and the novel is must stronger for allowing the reader to participate in the conversation with Mandel.
I “read” Station Eleven as an audio-book, and I am fairly new to consuming books in this fashion. I’ve listened to about a half-dozen audio-books prior to being addicted to Station Eleven, and that addiction is in no small part thanks narrator/reader Kirsten Porter. She subtly modifies her voice through inflection and/or accent to differentiate each character’s voice through which she speaks. I would have enjoyed the novel a great deal had I read the dead-tree version, but I can’t help but emphasize that Porter’s narrative skills enhanced my enjoyment of the novel; she brought a haunting tone to the novel I likely would have been unable to hear in my own voice.
Station Eleven is a powerful, evocative, harrowing, haunting, and hopeful tale of the world decimated by flu, but with a very strong core of humanity which can still be mined. In the genre of Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, which is overflowing with trope-ridden stories and countless tales of outbreak, Station Eleven stands out as an incredible story, literature, and art. It stands out as a pinnacle of not just Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, but the modern novel. It is a novel I found myself pulling away from with very great difficulty, it was with my thoughts constantly during the time I was listening to it and one that will sit with me for a very long time afterward. As it stands, it is one of the best/my favorite novels from the past few years. A magnificent achievement of novel that deserves all the accolades it has received and many it should have received (as GRRM notes in that link above, this one should have been on the final Hugo ballot for Best Novel).
Highly Recommended
© 2015 Rob H. Bedford
Random House Audio 2014 / Read by Kirsten Potter
Review copy purchased from audible.com
