Station Eleven

Re-Read 4/25/20 - 4/29/20In midst of the Great COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 I decided to revisit this and found it so much richer and touching the second time around. I noticed all the little details and appreciated each character's story arc more. How Dr. Eleven's planet and story-line echoed Jeevan & Frank's apartment and the journey of the survivors. Clark as the witness and preserver of history burrowed under my skin, and I dare anyone to get to Part 7, The Terminal, and not have a lump in your throat at certain passages. I even thought that in some aspects this echoed Arthurian legend and Arthur Leander's name isn't coincidental. The ending was perfect, optimistic, life affirming and realistic. Exactly what we need right now.pd. Also it seems to be a regular spring read for me. Who knew?First Read 5/6/16 - 5/9/16This is everything you didn't know you needed in a dystopian novel. Elegiac. Dark. Hopeful. [a:Emily St. John Mandel 2786093 Emily St. John Mandel https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1576606299p2/2786093.jpg] gives us a world we mourn for and all the things we are oblivious about and take for granted. Here's a passage is from the beginning of the end:“On silent afternoons in his brother's apartment, Jeevan found himself thinking about how human the city is, how human everything is. We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations air the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points of origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and then looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines. Jeevan was standing by the window when the lights went out.”And the world that comes later, after the flu that erases over 90% of Earth's population is scary, harsh and hard but also full of love, small everyday kindnesses and beautiful despite all that has been lost:“A few of the roofs had collapsed up here, most under the weight of fallen trees. In the morning light there was beauty in the decrepitude, sunlight catching in the flowers that had sprung up through the gravel of long-overgrown driveways, mossy front porches turned brilliant green, a white blossoming bush alive with butterflies. This dazzling world.”Arthur and Kristen are the two bookend characters of the dead and the new world and what good company they are and characters we won't soon forget. There is a bit about the circularity of time and how we all form part of the great tapestry but in such a matter of fact and subtle way that it almost creeps up on you like a piece of music. Music and Shakespeare and Star Trek and the wonderful Dr. Eleven, which I found myself wanting to read though I knew it to be a fiction of the story. These are the new religion once the Old World is thrown over by a virus. There is a new heaven and a new earth and it's not a bad one after all.