Book Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven follows Kristen from age eight as she lives through twenty years of apocalypse caused by a deadly pandemic. More so, it follows the people who met her on the day that the pandemic started when her older friend and fellow actor, Arthur dies suddenly on stage. She reads comic books by Miranda, Arthur’s first (and ex) wife, entitled Station Eleven. As the world moves on from electricity and cellphones, Kristen joins a traveling theatre and orchestra caravan who travels from settlement to settlement to entertain and socialize. When Kristen realizes that friends she left behind at a settlement are missing, it sets off a series of events that alters all the characters permanently.

This novel is a lyrical masterpiece. It delves deeply into both the past and the present with such ease that it is hard to put down. With such a large cast of characters, it could have easily been too thin to be interesting. But this novel so full of human emotion that it is no wonder that it was adapted to a television show (HBO optioned it and made a great series out of it in 2021).

The book was published in 2014. The parallels between this novel and how everything went down in 2020 really makes me realize how close we came to losing ourselves. To losing our civilization. The novel, like The Stand, really shows the best and worst of people, of civilization.

I give my highest recommendation to this novel. If you haven’t read it, or watched the show, I suggest you give both a try. They are worth your time and will make you think about what it is to exist in our world.