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Station Eleven: A Novel (National Book Award Finalist)
This Anniversary Edition of Station Eleven, a finalist for the National Book Award and named a Best Book of the Twenty-First Century by the New York Times, celebrates ten years of this now iconic novel with a new color illustration and a guide to “The Mandelverse”
A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days following civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
It is fifteen years after a flu pandemic wiped out most of the world's population. Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony, a small troupe moving over the gutted landscape, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. But when they arrive in the outpost of St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave. Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the disaster brought everyone here, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty, telling a story about the relationships that sustain us.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of the Century
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days following civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
It is fifteen years after a flu pandemic wiped out most of the world's population. Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony, a small troupe moving over the gutted landscape, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. But when they arrive in the outpost of St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave. Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the disaster brought everyone here, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty, telling a story about the relationships that sustain us.
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Community Reviews
The idea of this book intrigued me though I was concerned it was going to be too COVID like. But it was definitely not similar to the covid pandemic, it was more of an apocalyptic pandemic than covid was. It was interesting to see how things tied together. The end if a little ambiguous though.
It feels strange to describe a novel as “tender,” “hopeful,” or “sweetly yearning” when its central premise is a post-pandemic collapse of civilization. And yet, Emily St. John Mandel not only weaves such a novel, but also succeeds in creating a work that defies easy categorization and transcends genre.
The post-apocalyptic setting isn’t new, and considering the multi-year pandemic we recently lived through, neither is the threat of annihilation by microbe. Similarly, deeply flawed yet sympathetic characters are not revolutionary. But the care taken with each disparate narrative thread kept me marveling at the wonder of the world — both the fictional, titular Station Eleven and for our own imperfect, present-day, real-life world — even as the unspooling story kept me fully and deeply engaged.
As an extended ode to human ingenuity, the importance of connection, the enduring power and necessity of art… I clearly loved this.
The post-apocalyptic setting isn’t new, and considering the multi-year pandemic we recently lived through, neither is the threat of annihilation by microbe. Similarly, deeply flawed yet sympathetic characters are not revolutionary. But the care taken with each disparate narrative thread kept me marveling at the wonder of the world — both the fictional, titular Station Eleven and for our own imperfect, present-day, real-life world — even as the unspooling story kept me fully and deeply engaged.
As an extended ode to human ingenuity, the importance of connection, the enduring power and necessity of art… I clearly loved this.
I really liked the writing style and found some deeply profound sentences but I did not find the book entertaining. I wasn't drawn to the storyline of the theatre group bouncing back between life before the virus and post new world. It was not a regretful read but nothing I would run to.
The ending was a bit of a let down. It was interesting to read a post-apocalypse tale a few years after experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic. I never quite thought through what could have happened if society really fell so far to nearly wipe out humanity into a dark age, after an event like that. I was mostly hooked throughout, but was left wanting more conclusion at the end.
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