Station Eleven has made waves since its 2014 publication. It was nominated for a National Book Award and lauded by readers of lit-fic and SFF alike—a true rarity! Following the events of 2020 and beyond, Emily St. John Mandel’s pandemic story took on new meaning. Ever the untimely and perpetually-behind reader, I nabbed Station Eleven in 2024. Despite my tardiness, I’m happy to report the book is a delight insofar as a harrowing post-pandemic story can be.
Open on a stage. Arthur Leander, Hollywood star, has taken to the stage for a production of King Lear. In the midst of his performance, Leander suffers a heart attack, tragically ending his life. An audience member named Jeevan Chaudhary rushes onstage to perform CPR. Once the paramedics arrive, Chaudhary comforts child actor Kirsten Raymonde amidst the chaos. When the tumult subsides, everyone departs and awaits the story of Leander’s death to break. ItT is overshadowed by news of the Georgia Flu—previously relegated to a few small overseas cases—arriving in North America. The flu’s gestation period is incredibly short, and it kills in hours. Flash forward. We now follow a few characters in the collapsed world years after the flu destroyed the inner gears of society. The Travelling Symphony anchors us in this new world. Following the violence of the early years post-pandemic, the landscape is slightly less dangerous (but not completely harmless), and the Symphony loops around the Midwest playing music and performing Shakespeare for the tattered remains of humanity.
Station Eleven bounces around between the pre-pandemic, the early days of the collapse, and many years after. After finishing the book, I encountered a Goodreads review complaining about the time jumps and perspective shifts. This made me chortle because it reeks of a reader who has never read an epic fantasy book. To each their own, of course, but this issue did not surface for me at all. In fact, I found the balance delicate. Emily St. John Mandel cherry picks moments of each character’s life to share. It results in a collection of board stroke depictions; the book is only 330-ish pages, so we don’t have space or time for deep dives. Even so, the characters feel real and connective. Mandel interlaces their stories with one another in a truly believable way. Everything comes back to Arthur Leander in one way or another, and it’s a nice touch that connects otherwise disparate stories.
The plot is what kept me hooked for all of Station Eleven. It moves along at a brisk pace even as it hops between timelines and perspectives. It’s not an action-packed story by any means, though there are a few nail biting scenes. Instead, the momentum comes from curiosity. How does the world work? How do the people who were born into it understand life? What happens to people who remember technology, flight, and the internet? Further, Station Eleven explores both the light and the dark side of humanity in the wake of disaster. The book’s antagonist is The Prophet, a cult leader who ravages towns and subjects people to his will. The Prophet doesn’t get any POV chapters, nor does he feature in that many scenes. Still, he drives the plot by instigating incidents that keep our characters on the move. His presence elevates the slice-of-tattered-life story into one with a driving plot. The book is compulsively page-turning right up to its very end.
While most of my feelings are overwhelmingly positive, some elements floundered. Mandel sometimes writes long passages about a specific character’s past that drag on, despite the snappy prose that carries them. These elongated scenes—one of which chronicles the life of Arthur’s first wife, Miranda—have interesting touchpoints but lose steam within the context of the larger plot. To say why would be a spoiler. None of these sections ruined the book for me, but they were splotches of forgettability on an otherwise memorable canvas.
Then, of course, there’s the prescience of it all. In the past years, I’ve encountered a few pandemic stories. Most notably, this one and Severance. Both published before Covid and both stark predictions of a society’s reaction to crisis. Despite the dire circumstances within, both books manage to find speckles of hope inside a vast abyss of darkness, and that’s a reassuring twist in stories that feel all too real.
Rating: Station Eleven – 8.0/10
-Cole
