Station Eleven

‘'Because survival is insufficient.'' Is survival enough by itself? Is our race made in such a way that surviving is all we need? Do we really ‘'live'' once Arts, Companionship, Beauty, everything that makes us humans has fallen into chaos or has simply ceased to exist? The members of the Company try to keep Shakespeare's masterpieces and the power of Classical music alive to the remainings of a dying race, in this harrowing, exquisite novel by Emily St. John Mandel. ''Station Eleven'' isn't the kind of Dystopian novel we have come to familiarize ourselves with. There is no regime, no totalitarian government that oppresses the population, but a much greater threat, one that cannot be defeated by resistance and revolutions. A deadly virus has spread,no one can say where it started and how. The deterioration is so rapid that people die within a couple of days and the world seems to be at the final stages of existence. Parents bury their children, children their parents. Everything stops, just like that. No electric power, no means of transport, no hospitals. The apocalypse is named as the Collapse. Time stops and the Collapse becomes the new starting point of the remnants of civilization. Twenty years after the catastrophe, the Company is wandering in a very different USA, dragging the carts from state to state, providing comfort and hope that there is still something worth living for. However, they are exposed into a number of threats that are caused by anarchy and a rapidly emerging fundamentalism.The Company pre-existed the Collapse, its most esteemed member was Arthur, whose life provides the second focus of the story. Kirsten, a young woman whose life was majorly influenced by Arthur, tries to uncover the face he was hiding from the public. Along with August, another member of the Company, she enters the abandoned houses and collects everything that can be used. Not to steal but to preserve. By preserving the items of a household, they preserve memories. The writing is beautiful. Some of the darkest moments are described in a voice that hides tenderness and sensitivity, tranquility underneath despair. The focus is spread: Kirsten's life with the travelling company, Arthur and his relationships, Clark and Jeevan describing the first days of the nightmare, both linked to Arthur's past. As we go back and forth in time,we are given a complex and fast narration, a unique understanding of the story and its complications.Mandel provides moments when the reader can breath a bit more freely, but never for too long, because the darkness is approaching. She creates a wonderful balance, nothing is wasted, every story, past and present is necessary and we don't find that too often. I loved the interview between Kirsten and a reporter named Francois Diallo. It provides more insight to her character whom I personally found to be the living heart of the story, However there are two moments that set the tone of the book. The descriptions of Kirsten and August's findings in the houses and the first days of the Collapse in Toronto are devastating. Frightening and haunting.The high point of the described terror is Clark's chronicle of the endless,pointless waiting in the airport. I admit I was reading those pages and my heart was pounding. I swear to you that the kind of horror I felt was equal to the emotion caused by the infamous Room 101 in George Orwell's [b:1984 5470 1984 George Orwell https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348990566s/5470.jpg 153313]. Even in Atwood's masterpiece,[b:The Handmaid's Tale 38447 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1496592764s/38447.jpg 1119185], there is no scene that can be compared. I was completely shaken.I believe that the characters are very important in whether a Dystopian novel will be interesting or not. Here, every single character has a certain function. Arthur and Kirsten take the lion's share, but for me, the feeling of foreboding dread doesn't come from the anarchy that follows the Collapse, but from the shadowy threat of the Prophet, the leader of a sect that took advantage of the disaster in order to rise and control those willing to follow his doctrine. And this is where the difference between innocent faith and blind fundamentalism begins. Mandel makes the distinction very clear and I truly appreciated that, because many of us seem to confuse these two stages in order to impose our own beliefs to others.I don't think there's any respect in doing that... ''Station Eleven'' deserves all the hype and recognition. It cannot be compared to our two well-known Dystopian monsters, because the context is vastly different. As I was reading, I was reminded of another recent beautiful example of the genre, [b:The End We Start From 33858905 The End We Start From Megan Hunter https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1484434655s/33858905.jpg 53628450] by Megan Hunter. Still, the two questions that arise are common to all these excellent creations. Is survival enough without beauty, safety and hope?And if we survive, how do we cope with a world and a life that has been altered beyond repair? Let us hope we are never obliged to find the answers in these questions in real life... ‘'What was lost in the Collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of ‘'A Midsummer's Night Dream'' in a parking lot in the mysteriously named town of St. Deborah by the Water, Lake Michigan shining a half mile away.''