Station Eleven

2021 re-read update: When my grandkids ask me about COVID-19, I think the first thing I'll tell them is that I read Station Eleven in December 2019, and it 100% freaked me out. I'm not sure how many people read this in the months before our actual outbreak, but it's a special kind of surreal to read a richly imagined book about a respiratory virus from central Asia killing the world, and then watch it happen in real time. I understand if few people want to read it until long after COVID has passed, but I found a second read highlighted everything I enjoyed about it the first time: the beauty of her prose, the haunting nature of the scenery, the kaleidoscope of characters interacting and piecing together, and the centrality of the important things in life: survival is insufficient. In a strange way, I also found it comforting in COVID, and it strengthened my resolve on the hard days of quarantine/distancing life, knowing just how much worse it easily could have been. Everyone should read it, but maybe not RIGHT before a global pandemic.

Original review from 2019:

I loved Station Eleven. I somehow didn't realize that the central premise is a post-disaster story (which is revealed very early), so the book's setting up of the societal collapse hit me harder than for most people. (It does also go to show you how we shouldn't pigeonhole books by genre, and instead let them surprise us). A lot of familiar elements are there, from films like Contagion describing a medical outbreak, or grim survival like The Road, or both like The Stand. And while it didn't shy away from showing the despair of living through – or dying during – the collapse of civilization, I appreciated that this wasn't the main tone. The book's motto is “survival is insufficient,” so it felt appropriate that the book feels more melancholy and wistful (and occasionally generous and warm) than just bleak. The main characters are all performers, so the focus is on making the world worth living in through their art.

Structurally, the plot points also tie neatly together, like a quilt where all the patches match up just right. It sometimes feels like an I Spy, where you see connections between characters separated by decades and continents. Flashbacks and key items all feel intertwined, without feeling too contrived.

I also liked her writing, with its beautiful, flowing long sentences. There's a chapter late in All The Light We Cannot See that's composed of a montage of long sentences, and Emily Mandel reminded me of that a bit. It's the first book in a while I've sprinted through, and I've been thinking about it ever since. I highly recommend it.