Review: Station Eleven

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel (Vintage, 2014)

First line: “The King stood in a pool of light, unmoored.”

This book has been on my radar for so long. So many of my most valued recommendation sources have talked endlessly about it, and I was a little worried that it wouldn’t live up to the hype. But reader, it did.

The characters of this story all revolve around one aging actor, who dies from a heart attack on stage playing King Lear in the first chapter. The night he dies is also the night that the pandemic Georgia Flu reaches North America, and over the next couple weeks, 99% of the world population dies. Nearly two decades later, we are following a traveling theater troupe, the Traveling Symphony, who bring culture and music to the small pockets of life that remain around the Great Lakes, because, as the borrowed quote from Star Trek: Voyager goes, “survival is insufficient.”

Phew, what a premise, right? I think what I loved most about this book, besides the beautiful, lyrical prose, is the structure Mandel uses. This story is not told chronologically, but jumps backwards and forwards through time, giving us glimpses of the various characters at different points in their lives and how they overlap with each other. She anchors us throughout, though, giving plenty frames of reference to keep us grounded, and I never felt confused about where or when we were in the story. Instead, it serves to slowly reveal to us their fullness as we come to understand and care for these characters. She builds suspense by providing little clues along the way, passing comments that make us stop and think, hang on, what did she just say? Or, wait, that name seems familiar, when did I see it before? I found it just so compelling.

The other thing I wasn’t quite expecting, was that the story is ultimately hopeful. Yes, almost the entire human population dies. Yes, life for the survivors is incredibly difficult. And yet, humanity goes on and rebuilds and establishes community and love and joy once again.

I feel so grateful to have spent time with these characters and in Mandel’s beautiful language. I wanted it to go on and on. I will definitely be reading her next release, The Glass Hotel, that comes out later this month, and am tempted to go back into her back catalog and check out her previous work. Have you read any other Mandel novels you would recommend?