Gain Station Eleven Executed By Emily St. John Mandel Rendered As Print

don't know why it bothers me so that I thought this book was just ok, So many of my GR friends have embraced this Station Eleven and have shouted its praises from the rooftop, I struggled through the firstpages, didn't want to throw it under the couch, but wasn't finding myself engaged, Perhaps I should have quit while I was ahead but stubborn that I am, I carried on, It never really got better for me but I did finish, At least I won't feel left out,

Shakespeare is dead and I prefer him to remain so, That could have been part of my problem, The only character I really liked was Miranda, I love stories about pandemics but was surprised that I wasn't cheering for these characters to survive, The Traveling Symphony was a unique tool but never captured my fancy,

I certainly can't fault the writing, Creative Perhaps. I have been as positive as I can be in regards to my feelings about Station Eleven,

Would I try another of Mandel's books Maybe,

This was a lovely, elevated apocalypse story that was very touching, The integration of acting and Hollywood world was really interesting, I'm sure even moreso to someone who isn't in "the biz, " If you want a dose of great storytelling with your postdisaster wasteland fiction, this is a book for you! Ive been meaning to read this book for years, and now that I finally did, I feel the sort of acute disappointment that comes from wanting something for so long that the eventual achievement of it is a loss.


There are many things this book does well, but in the end I'm not sure Station Eleven was the book I really wanted it to be, though it was undeniably itself.
Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest, He died three weeks later on the road out of the city,

on the night the world begins to end, a man has a heart attack and dies onstage while performing the lead role in king lear.
considering that shortly after this, the georgia flu will have killed offof the population and changed the world as we know it forever, it seems unlikely that he would be remembered among so many millions dead.
but that's the kind of book this is, the story of the people who have touched our lives in unexpected ways, an echoing world in which Hell is the absence of the people you long for, where the little things or the memories of them matter the most.


arthur leander is a famous hollywood actor with three exwives, a son he never sees, a lover, a friend who knew him when, and various people to whom he has been kind, careless, or otherwise meaningful, including a little girl who watches him die beside her onstage, and the paparazzo turned paramedic who tried to save his life.


twenty years later, pieces of arthur still remain in the wasteland in the memories of survivors, in his blood, in the provenance of talismanic objects, and in the ripple effect of events he set in motion when he was still alive.
this is a multiple POV novel that jumps back and forth in time, from arthur's rise to fame and the stories of those he loved and lost along the way, to the stories of the survivors, finding and creating meaning in the ashes.


Kirsten and August walked mostly in silence, A deer crossed the road ahead and paused to look at them before

it vanished into the trees, The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone, If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it

kirsten is the little girl who was onstage with arthur when he died, and is now a grown woman touring the wasteland with a group of musicians and actors known as "the traveling symphony", bringing entertainment to the scattered settlements.
she has a tattoo on her arm with a quote from a remembered star trek episode: Because survival is insufficient, and this is one of the major preoccupations of the novel the importance of art and a shared cultural history to those who remain.
whether it is the objects collected in the "museum of civilization," the persistence of shakespeare, the significance of portions of a tattered comic book from which this novel draws its name in the hands of two different characters who will take from it wildly different meanings, or even the memory of star trek, these are the things that connect those who are left.
it is the tenacity of what remains, what endures, and what can still be done with it the clinging to what makes us human to what matters in the aftermath, and to what binds us together.


that's not to say this is a gentle apocalypse solely concerned with maintaining cultural heritage, there are dangers everywhere in a world without pharmaceuticals or technology, a world in which a lack of codified behavior can make a man believe he is a prophet, and to give his dark vision free reign.


it's a stunner, straight up, and between this and california, it's a great time to be a woman writing litdystopias, i have read ohsomany postapocalyptic novels, but mandel managed to show me something new, she writes a complicated, multivoiced story in the fragments we are allowed to see the slices of experience from both before and after the cataclysm, where a dinner party scene is just as interesting and fraught with tension as anything from the early days of the disease, and there are so many unforgettable jewels of moments: jeevan and his wheelchairbound brother trying to wait out the plague, a quarantined plane on the edge of the tarmac, the memory of oranges.


she has such a strong, wonderful voice and has created tender and sympathetic characters who may be deeply flawed, but are the very personifications of the stubbornness of humanity.


one of the things that surprised me is that more wasn't made of the king lear parallels, i mean arthur had three wives, lear had three daughters and since there are so many references to shakespeare throughout, both overt and oblique one of arthur's wives is named miranda, another is elizabethian, one of the section titles is a midsummer night's dream, the georgia flu is somewhat analogous to the black plague of shakespeare's time i feel like it would have given the novel another layer of kapow to have developed the theme even further.
but no one of arthur's wives doesn't even appear in the book except a brief mention that she existed, and jeez would it have killed mandel to have given v, a chapter you know we want to know more about that situation!!

but these are just minor quibbles over an incredibly intelligent and gripping novel, and we can still have a little fun with names here, exclusive of shakespeare if we play a little freeassociation game with mostnotablynamed, "arthur leander" roughly translates into "king of tragic lovers.
" which is apt.

two quick notes: if you don't want a very popular fouryearold book that yes, i know, i probably should have read already spoiled for you, don't read the acknowledgments.
because yeah. oops. that was me.

and if the graphic novel that plays such an important role in this book is NOT picked up by someone and published as a companion book, it will be a huge missed opportunity.
because we want it. bad.

sitelinkcome to my blog! An exceptionally well rendered portrait of Elvis on a magnificent black velvet background,

Station Eleven, Emily St, John Mandelsnovel is the "Velvet Elvis" of postapocalyptic books, a surprisingly different form than usual with a style all its own,

“Postapocalyptic literary science fiction” was one way I have heard it described, and also “pastoral science fiction” and I here adopt both descriptions, Mandel has certainly softened the Mad Max edges off her story and provided a ponderous, meandering and thoughtful account of a world with a lot less people,

Telling the story before and after a global pandemic, many readers will liken this to Stephen Kingsclassic sitelinkThe Stand, as here the culprit is the Georgian flu which kills in hours not days.
Mandels prose is in tone and structure like Jennifer Egans award winningnovel sitelinkA Visit from the Goon Squad, We visityears after the collapse and then relive moments years before and then contemporaneous with the global spread of the disease, I was also reminded of Bradburys “There will come soft rains” with its quiet, somber reflections and recollections of the time before, Philip K. Dicks sitelinkDr. Bloodmoney is another book that I would categorize Station Eleven with a softer, gentler and kinder vision of a world after catastrophe,

“Because survival is insufficient” an old Star Trek slogan sums up this work, Mandel portrays her survivors as yearning to keep the flame of civilization lit, We follow Miranda, the Station Eleven graphic novel artist and the graphic novel that survives the apocalypse, Also, Arthur Leander, an actor who plays King Lear just before the pandemic, Finally, Mandel introduces a troupe of actors and musicians traveling from town to town after the “collapse” performing symphonies and Shakespeare,

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper, Mandel poses existential questions about living where only weeks before the pandemic people were worried about meaningless, inconsequential things and only minimally connected to the world around them, Station Eleven, named after the graphic novel which had a very limited production and was drawn not for commercial success but for the sake of the art, is an examination of our culture in eulogy.


One of the central characters, Clark, forms a museum of civilization in an abandoned airport and preserves relics of what the people of the new world should try to remember of the past, only recently departed.


A very good book that I highly recommend,

To survive is painful,

So is trying to get through this book! There has been a ton of hype surrounding Station Eleven and nothing but rave reviews.
Someone please explain it to me because I just dont get it, I wish, I had embarked on the same journey as those readers, but it was like slow torture instead, Boring beyond belief, with a cast of unlikeable characters and a plot that was all over the place,

I wasn't impressed with the author's writing either, as most people seem to be, The only thing that kept me going was the hope that I would be rewarded with an ending that tied all of the weirdness together in an interesting way.
Thats not what happened though,

If you start this book and dont enjoy it immediately, I would move on, It doesnt get any better, Adult speculative fiction

Even since reading The Stand by Stephen King when I was a kid, Ive had a soft spot for apocalyptic plagues that wipe out humanity.
Er I mean in fiction, of course, Station Eleven is in that vein,

The Georgia Flu sweeps across the world, killing most of humanity, St. JohnMandel, using beautiful prose and poignant characterization, follows the lives of various survivors, tracing how their lives intersect in a group of entertainers called the Traveling Symphony, The thread that connects their stories is Arthur Leander, an aging Hollywood star who on the same night that the plague began destroying civilization was trying to reboot his career when he died on stage in Toronto during King Lear.
We jump back and forth in time, watching how his life influenced what will happen to our band of survivors,

If youre a fan of the TV series The Last Ship or books like The Stand, you may enjoy the premise and the way St, JohnMandel evokes a world without the trappings of modern civilization, The end of the novel hints at mysteries yet to solve for our heroes, I hope this means a sequel is in the works, . . I don't know if you will like this book,

It's a very particular kind of book done very well, which is not remotely a promise that you will like it, The jacket copy is not untrue, but it also isn't helpful, Yes, this is book about the end of the world as we know it, yes, this is a book about a postapocalyptic Shakespearean troupe, yes, this is a book about a Hollywood actor's dispiriting love life.
But that doesn't tell you how the book feels  what the experience is like reading it, This is less a novel of plot and more a novel of theme, a precisely painted mural of people living in extreme circumstances, Some of the chapters take place after the apocalypse, and some take place before, but it doesn't change the tone  the characters' personal worlds are under duress in both timelines.


I take back what I said about the jacket copy being true, by the way, It says this book is "suspenseful, " I think that's an unfair and incorrect descriptor for a book that shines for other reasons, I couldn't put this book down, but that is not the same as being suspenseful, My attention was held by the sharp insights on every page, not by a headlong plunge toward the end, Like I said, it's a book of theme, not story, Station Eleven follows a few central characters faithfully enough to satisfy my need for a human thread, but it might not be enough for those who strongly prefer plotdriven novels.


Verdict: unsentimental and cleareyed portrait of what humanity considers civilization, .