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Station Eleven: A Novel (National Book Award Finalist) Paperback – June 2, 2015
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Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.
Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.
Look for Emily St. John Mandel’s bestselling new novel, Sea of Tranquility!
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateJune 2, 2015
- Dimensions5.2 x 0.71 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100804172447
- ISBN-13978-0804172448
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Station Eleven is so compelling, so fearlessly imagined, that I wouldn’t have put it down for anything.” —Ann Patchett
“A superb novel . . . [that] leaves us not fearful for the end of the word but appreciative of the grace of everyday existence.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Deeply melancholy, but beautifully written, and wonderfully elegiac . . . A book that I will long remember, and return to.” —George R. R. Martin
“Absolutely extraordinary.” —Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus
“Darkly lyrical. . . . A truly haunting book, one that is hard to put down." —The Seattle Times
“Tender and lovely. . . . Equal parts page-turner and poem.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Mesmerizing.” — People
“Mandel delivers a beautifully observed walk through her book’s 21st century world…. I kept putting the book down, looking around me, and thinking, ‘Everything is a miracle.’”—Matt Thompson, NPR
“Magnificent.” —Booklist
“My book of the year.”—Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
“Unmissable. . . . A literary page-turner, impeccably paced, which celebrates the world lost.” —Vulture
“Haunting and riveting.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Station Eleven is the kind of book that speaks to dozens of the readers in me—the Hollywood devotee, the comic book fan, the cult junkie, the love lover, the disaster tourist. It is a brilliant novel, and Emily St. John Mandel is astonishing.” —Emma Straub, author of The Vacationers
“Think of Cormac McCarthy seesawing with Joan Didion. . . . Magnetic.” —Kirkus (starred)
“Even if you think dystopian fiction is not your thing, I urge you to give this marvelous novel a try. . . . [An] emotional and thoughtful story.” —Deborah Harkness, author of The Book of Life
“It’s hard to imagine a novel more perfectly suited, in both form and content, to this literary moment. Station Eleven, if we were to talk about it in our usual way, would seem like a book that combines high culture and low culture—“literary fiction” and “genre fiction.” But those categories aren’t really adequate to describe the book” —The New Yorker
“Audacious. . . . A book about gratitude, about life right now, if we can live to look back on it." —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“A surprisingly beautiful story of human relationships amid devastation.” —The Washington Post
“Soul-quaking. . . . Mandel displays the impressive skill of evoking both terror and empathy.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
“A genuinely unsettling dystopian novel that also allows for moments of great tenderness. Emily St. John Mandel conjures indelible visuals, and her writing is pure elegance.” —Patrick deWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers
“Possibly the most captivating and thought-provoking post-apocalyptic novel you will ever read.” —The Independent (London)
“A firework of a novel . . . full of life and humanity and the aftershock of memory.” —Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls
“One of the best things I’ve read on the ability of art to endure in a good long while.” —Tobias Carroll, Electric Literature
“Will change the post-apocalyptic genre. . . . This isn’t a story about survival, it’s a story about living.” —Boston Herald
“A big, brilliant, ambitious, genre-bending novel. . . . Hands-down one of my favorite books of the year.” —Sarah McCarry, Tor.com
“Strange, poetic, thrilling, and grim all at once, Station Eleven is a prismatic tale about survival, unexpected coincidences, and the significance of art.” —Bustle, “Best Book of the Month”
“Disturbing, inventive and exciting, Station Eleven left me wistful for a world where I still live.” —Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
“I’m parked just outside,” he said. “I’ll bring the cart back.” The clerk nodded, tired. She was young, early twenties probably, with dark bangs that she kept pushing out of her eyes. He forced the impossibly heavy cart outside and half-pushed, half-skidded through the snow at the exit. There was a long ramp down into a small park-like arrangement of benches and planters. The cart gained speed on the incline, bogged down in deep snow at the bottom of the ramp and slid sideways into a planter.
It was eleven twenty. The supermarket closed in forty minutes. He was imagining how long it would take to bring the cart up to Frank’s apartment, to unload it, the time required for tedious explanations and reassurances of sanity before he could return to the grocery store for more supplies. Could there be any harm in leaving the cart here for the moment? There was no one on the street. He called Hua on his way back into the store.
“What’s happening now?” He moved quickly through the store while Hua spoke. Another case of water—Jeevan was under the impression that one can never have too much—and then cans and cans of food, all the tuna and beans and soup on the shelf, pasta, anything that looked like it might last a while. The hospital was full of flu patients and the situation was identical at the other hospitals in the city. The ambulance service was overwhelmed. Thirty-seven patients had died now, including every patient who’d been on the Moscow flight and two E.R. nurses who’d been on duty when the first patients came in. The shopping cart was almost unmanageably heavy. Hua said he’d called his wife and told her to take the kids and leave the city tonight, but not by airplane. Jeevan was standing by the cash register again, the clerk scanning his cans and packages. The part of the evening that had transpired in the Elgin Theatre seemed like possibly a different lifetime. The clerk was moving very slowly. Jeevan passed her a credit card and she scrutinized it as though she hadn’t just seen it five or ten minutes ago.
“Take Laura and your brother,” Hua said, “and leave the city tonight.”
“I can’t leave the city tonight, not with my brother. I can’t rent a wheelchair van at this hour.”
In response there was only a muffled sound. Hua was coughing.
“Are you sick?” Jeevan was pushing the cart toward the door.
“Goodnight, Jeevan.” Hua disconnected and Jeevan was alone in the snow. He felt possessed. The next cart was all toilet paper. The cart after that was more canned goods, also frozen meat and aspirin, garbage bags, bleach, duct tape.
“I work for a charity,” he said to the girl behind the cash register, his third or fourth time through, but she wasn’t paying much attention to him. She kept glancing up at the small television above the film development counter, ringing his items through on autopilot. Jeevan called Laura on his sixth trip through the store, but his call went to voicemail.
“Laura,” he began. “Laura.” He thought it better to speak to her directly and it was already almost eleven fifty, there wasn’t time for this. Filling the cart with more food, moving quickly through this bread-and-flower-scented world, this almost-gone place, thinking of Frank in his 22nd floor apartment, high up in the snowstorm with his insomnia and his book project, his day-old New York Times and his Beethoven. Jeevan wanted desperately to reach him. He decided to call Laura later, changed his mind and called the home line while he was standing by the checkout counter, mostly because he didn’t want to make eye contact with the clerk.
“Jeevan, where are you?” She sounded slightly accusatory. He handed over his credit card.
“Are you watching the news?”
“Should I be?”
“There’s a flu epidemic, Laura. It’s serious.”
“That thing in Russia or wherever? I knew about that.”
“It’s here now. It’s worse than we’d thought. I’ve just been talking to Hua. You have to leave the city.” He glanced up in time to see the look the checkout girl gave him.
“Have to? What? Where are you, Jeevan?” He was signing his name on the slip, struggling with the cart toward the exit, where the order of the store ended and the frenzy of the storm began. It was difficult to steer the cart with one hand. There were already five carts parked haphazardly between benches and planters, dusted now with snow.
“Just turn on the news, Laura.”
“You know I don’t like to watch the news before bed. Are you having an anxiety attack?”
“What? No. I’m going to my brother’s place to make sure he’s okay.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“You’re not even listening. You never listen to me.” Jeevan knew this was probably a petty thing to say in the face of a probable flu pandemic, but couldn’t resist. He plowed the cart into the others and dashed back into the store. “I can’t believe you left me at the theatre,” he said. “You just left me at the theatre performing CPR on a dead actor.”
“Jeevan, tell me where you are.”
“I’m in a grocery store.” It was eleven fifty-five. This last cart was all grace items: vegetables, fruit, bags of oranges and lemons, tea, coffee, crackers, salt, preserved cakes. “Look, Laura, I don’t want to argue. This flu’s serious, and it’s fast.”
“What’s fast?”
“This flu, Laura. It’s really fast. Hua told me. It’s spreading so quickly. I think you should get out of the city.” At the last moment, he added a bouquet of daffodils.
Product details
- Publisher : Vintage; Reprint edition (June 2, 2015)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0804172447
- ISBN-13 : 978-0804172448
- Item Weight : 9 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.2 x 0.71 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #54 in Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction (Books)
- #143 in Science Fiction Adventures
- #373 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL is the author of six novels, including Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her work has been translated into thirty-two languages. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
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The book starts with the description of a production of King Lear. Arthur, the actor playing Lear, collapses on stage. Attempts to revive him fail. He dies. A conceit of this production is to put three young girls on stage before the action starts: they are Lear’s daughters –Regan, Goneril and Cordelia-- but as children playing games while their already aging father watches them. The youngest of the girls is escorted from the stage. She doesn‘t really understand what has happened, and soon it won’t matter, because that very day a deadly flu variant finally hits the States. Within a day, a week, a month, not just here in the States, almost everyone is dead. So dies a world. Soon there’s no internet, radio or TV, no phone system, no computers, and no trains, planes, cars, not even gasoline because petrol has a lifespan too before it turns bad. The survivors include the girl who played the child Cordelia when Arthur died. The young man who gave Arthur CPR on stage survives too as do Arthur’s son and one of his three wives.
But it’s a new life they lead. Kirsten is now a grownup actress, a member of the Traveling Orchestra, a collective that travels from settlement to settlement performing one night as an orchestra and the next as actors performing Shakespeare. A sign of the altered life she now leads, Kristen has four knives in a row tattooed on one forearm, one for each marauder she has killed. Carter, Arthur’s childhood friend and then his lawyer in the old world, lives in an abandoned airport now. It was a regional airport. When the flu hit with devastating thoroughness and speed, it the airport was cordoned off to prevent the flu escaping from the terminal but the flu didn‘t strike the people in the airport at all and the quarantine stopped others from bringing it and infecting them.
The story that Station Eleven tells is complicated, even twisty, with repeated steps back and forth between before and after, and shifts in perspective among a large cast of characters. But it all hangs together and the effect is devastating. Mandel is an extraordinarily talented wordsmith. Her images are concrete but evocative, her characters pop off of the page, and there are new discoveries all the way to the end of the book. Station Eleven has already wound up on one paper’s best of the year list –the Washington Post. It has received a National Book Award nomination. One New York Times reviewer didn’t like but the other two did. Read it yourself and see what you think.
On the other hand, I thought there were some flaws as well. None were fatal on their own, but added together, they did lessen the impact of the book below what it had the potential to be. In fact, most could be thought of as caveats to the strong points I mentioned above. While I did admire Mandel's attempts to go above/beyond the day-to-day "survival" aspect of the post-apocalypse, this also did lessen my ability to really grasp/believe/feel the world that she has created. Other than the danger presented by the prophet and his crew, there is no real sense of danger or adversity for the main characters in the story. At worst, they complain about the heat. In a world that fits the literal definition of "anarchy", the idea of a band of traveling actors/musicians just seems implausible ... almost laughable (granted, there are no zombies here, but this group would be lucky to survive a day in the world of the Walking Dead). At the very least, much more detail is needed to answer the questions that will surely nag at the reader. On the other hand, given that a full two decades have passed, it is surprising that more progress hasn't been made to restore civilization (*especially* if the world is as generally peaceful as Mandel portrays it to be). To be frank, Mandel seems more interested in filling in the *pre*-apocalyptic "past" of Arthur Leander and his associates than that of the *post*-apocalyptic "present." While both were interesting, and fit together in a vague "everything is connected / you make your own fate" kind of way, it leaves the reader a little unclear what Mandel is trying to say exactly. Mandel sets herself up nicely for a deep exploration of the desire to preserve what you have versus to create something new (this is basically the main theme of the Station Eleven comic), but this just didn't come through that strongly in the actual/non-comic story. This focus on both "before" and "after" also hurts the pacing of the story. Although the "pre" world is the better developed story, these reminisces on the past put the brakes on the faster-paced, more suspenseful "present".
Many of the characters were pretty well fleshed out (for whatever reason, Clark was a favorite of mine) but others were either underdeveloped or underutilized. "The prophet" is perhaps the main example. Given the prophet's age and the centrality of Arthur Leander, an attentive reader will figure out his identity pretty much as soon as he is introduced, yet Mandel spends a long time making the reveal official. Moreover, oddly, he is one of the few characters that we never see things from his perspective (maybe because there is little to see?). What's the saying about a story being only as good as its villain? Unfortunately, that's a problem for this story ... the prophet has no worldview, no real philosophy ... just self-aggrandizing megalomania. In general, while we get to know a half dozen or so people quite well (Arthur, Clark, Miranda, Kirsten), most others are hard to really care about positively or negatively--especially in the post-apocalypse.
This seems like a lot of complaining, but overall I did like the book. I just didn't finish it as moved or as intellectually stimulated/challenged as I hoped. The description on Amazon calls this book "audacious" ... but is it really? There are many books dealing with apocalyptic themes, and it seems like these days more books shift between different times and perspectives than don't ... while Mandel's voice is unique, this book is also surprisingly "safe" on a number of fronts. Perhaps my expectations were just a bit too high ... I liked this book, but I just didn't love it as much as I hoped I would.
I’m currently watching the Mini series and super excited for it.
Top reviews from other countries
Eine poetische Reise durch eine fragile postapokalyptische Welt / A Poetic Journey Through a Fragile Post-Apocalyptic World.
"Station Eleven" ist ein fesselndes Buch, das mich von Anfang bis Ende in seinen Bann gezogen hat. Die Autorin, Emily St. John Mandel, schafft es meisterhaft, eine postapokalyptische Welt zu entwerfen, die gleichzeitig düster und hoffnungsvoll ist.Die Geschichte folgt verschiedenen Charakteren, die auf beeindruckende Weise miteinander verbunden sind. Mandel wechselt geschickt zwischen verschiedenen Zeitebenen, was dem Roman eine faszinierende Struktur verleiht. Die Überlebenden einer tödlichen Grippe-Epidemie versuchen, in einer Welt ohne Elektrizität und moderne Technologie zu überleben.Die Charakterentwicklung ist bemerkenswert, und man kann sich leicht mit den unterschiedlichen Figuren identifizieren. Mandels Sprache ist poetisch und einfühlsam, was die Atmosphäre des Buches noch intensiver macht."Station Eleven" regt nicht nur zum Nachdenken über die Fragilität unserer Zivilisation an, sondern auch über die Bedeutung von Kunst und Kultur in einer Welt, die dem Untergang geweiht zu sein scheint. Die Beschreibungen der verlassenen Städte und die Suche nach menschlicher Verbindung verleihen dem Buch eine tiefgreifende emotionale Dimension.Insgesamt ist "Station Eleven" ein literarisches Meisterwerk, das die Leser mit einer packenden Handlung und anspruchsvollen Themen begeistern wird. Ich kann es nur wärmstens empfehlen, besonders für diejenigen, die nach einem Buch suchen, das sowohl intellektuell anregend als auch emotional berührend ist.
"Station Eleven" is a captivating book that held me spellbound from beginning to end. The author, Emily St. John Mandel, masterfully crafts a post-apocalyptic world that is both bleak and hopeful.The story follows various characters intricately connected in a post-pandemic landscape. Mandel skillfully navigates between different timelines, giving the novel a fascinating structure. Survivors of a deadly flu epidemic strive to adapt to a world devoid of electricity and modern technology.The character development is remarkable, and readers can easily identify with the diverse cast. Mandel's language is poetic and empathetic, intensifying the novel's atmosphere."Station Eleven" not only prompts reflection on the fragility of our civilization but also on the significance of art and culture in a seemingly doomed world. The descriptions of abandoned cities and the search for human connection add a profound emotional dimension to the book.Overall, "Station Eleven" is a literary masterpiece that will captivate readers with its compelling plot and sophisticated themes. I highly recommend it, especially for those seeking a book that is intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant.Furthermore, the absence of smartphones, internet, and the inability to swiftly travel to the other end of the earth by plane underscores a haunting reality. The characters must rely on traditional forms of communication, adding an extra layer of realism to the narrative. The inability to communicate over long distances amplifies the survivors' isolation, emphasizing the fragile nature of our highly technological world. This element significantly contributes to the allure of "Station Eleven," compelling readers to contemplate the impact of technological collapse on our interpersonal connections.