Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Amazon Summary: 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.
It’s currently the summer of 2020 and the United States is experiencing a pandemic called the COVID-19. As I was browsing Instagram one day, a story popped up that made me very excited. One of my English teachers from college was starting a summer book club. I messaged her immediately saying that I wanting to join. In a few weeks, she sent out the book list and funny enough, the first book we were going to discuss would be Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I say “funny enough” as if she picked it by happen stance. She chose the book with a specific purpose. Later, she divulged to us (the book club containing a group of her past students) that she was using us as guinea pigs to rework her curriculum for her next semester. She wanted to to be her guinea pigs to see if she could use the book with her future students in a class setting. All the participants in the groups were game and so we began to read knowing what lay ahead of us.
Station Eleven is an interesting book that plays out the idea of a pandemic that destroyed the world and turning it into an apocalyptic death trap for humanity to survive in. The plot line follows several different people’s lives from the night of the outbreak through several years of their lives, jumping around from character to character, interweaving their story lines in a way that is unknown at first. To set the scene, the first chapter of the book is from the perspective of the character Jeevan. He went with his girl friend to watch the play King Lear when the lead actor collapse on stage. Jeevan, who was currently training to be a paramedic, sprung into action and jumped on the stage to perform CPR. Despite Jeevan’s efforts, the lead actor, passed away. After Arthur is ushered away by the real paramedics, Jeevan notices a young actress from the play watching the scene in horror. He goes to talk with Kirsten, to shield her from the horrors of her co star’s death and help her find her guardian. Later that night, it is announced on the news that every hospital was full with people infected by what they called the Georgia flu. Over the next couple of weeks, millions of people are infected and die quickly transforming the world into an apocalyptic state with no society, no internet, no fuel, no food, and no resemblance to the normal every day.
Throughout the book, Mandel flies back and forth in time through a few character’s lives: Arthur, his many wives and his son Tyler, Jeevan, Kirsten and her Traveling Symphony, and Clark, who is Arthur’s childhood friend. Twenty years later, no longer a little girl, Kirsten is apart of a traveling acting group called The Traveling Symphony. Their motto is displayed not the side of their caravan: “Because survival is insufficient.” The reader follows her story as the Symphony passed from town to town performing mostly Shakespear plays in costumes taken from run down houses and stores with no occupants. The symphony returns to a town previously visited to find out that it had been overrun by a cult led by a man they called “The Prophet.” His radical ideals and violent ways lead the Symphony to leave as quickly as they came. However, when the Symphony leaves, a young girl from the town stole away in their caravan. She was promised to the Prophet as his next wife, even though she was only 12 years old. Because the Symphony harbored the girl, the Prophet tracked down the Symphony to brings justice on them and take back his bride. The story follows the race to safety for the Symphony from the Prophet and his band of marauders, who are in hot pursuit, killing off members of the traveling group one by one.
Throughout this main story line, different scenes of Arthur’s life, his wives, and his friend Clark are artistically scattered throughout helping the reader make connections between each character. The reader learns that Arthur had a mild amount of fame in his younger years and yearned for the fame till his dying day. The scenes depict his different wives and the impact that he had on them, showing flashes of his strive for fame overshadowing his humanity. His first wife, Miranda, was an artist and created a comic/graphic novel named Station Eleven. His second wife, Elizabeth, moved to Israel taking their son Tyler after Arthur had lost interest in their marriage. As the want of fame consumes his actions and direction in life, Arthur tries a little to be apart of his son’s life in small ways. He like sending him copies of Miranda’s comic. Arthur also gave Kirsten a copy before he died. Following intricate plots intertwined into each other, the reader is shown how each character is intimately connected and influences each other even though they don’t directly connect. It is truly beautiful how Mandel writes so seamlessly between each story line, helping you to see the bigger picture through the tiny moments.
Mandel’s character development is wonderfully written and developed through many scenes in the book. Even though the topic of a pandemic is unsettling, her specifically chosen words romanticizes the reader, pulling them into the plot and inspires investment into the characters and their situation. Her writing style is so fluid that each character’s story is easy to follow as you read the sliding timelines of past and future through their lives. In fact, it is intriguing to see each character’s progression and struggle and how each are influenced by the next without direct connectio. The pandemic is explained through different points of view, giving it life, realistic depth, and understanding through the different perspectives. From Clark’s point of view, he remembers life before the pandemic and the luxuries that existed. The reader sees his struggle to cope with a different society and the lack of meaning in all of it. From Kirsten’s perspective, the reader experiences a character who has grown up during the pandemic and doesn’t remember much of her childhood or life before. She only knows the ruin of the world and the darkness that now resides in her because of the things that she has experienced.
There are so many themes spread throughout the book that influence the characters. Unfortunately, if I was to comment on all of them, this review would be a book in itself. One of the most impactful ones for me, was the idea of the modern life we have created for ourselves. Mandel sprinkles scenes throughout the book hinting at the idea of humanity and how we are all, in some way, distracting ourselves. Clark reflects on this theme in his life a few times. The first mention was before the pandemic hit. He was on his way out of the subway and noticed that everyone around him was on their phone. He belittled them in his thoughts, said that they weren’t fully living their lives. Then, as he was getting on the subway, he reflected on his own life. He came to the conclusion that he was distracting himself just as much when he realized that he has lived many days “sleepwalking”.
In a later scene, Clark was meeting to consult with a client about a problem with one of their managers. He discussed with the executive, Daliah, on how to help the manager be better at his position. However, Daliah progressed past Clark’s suggestions for changes and continued with her own diatribe about the manager’s life. She explained to Clark that she thought the manager’s problem was more than the job. She suspected that he wasn’t happy in his life and didn’t know it. She thought this was the true source of his problem. She explained:
“'Okay so you go into the break room,’ she says, ‘and a couple of people you like are there, say someone’s telling a funny story, you laugh a little, you feel included, everyone’s so funny, you go back to our desk with a sort of, I don’t know, I guess afterglow would be the right work? You go back to your desk with an afterglow, but then by four or five o’clock the day’s just turning into another day, and you go on like that, looking forward to five o’clock and then the weekend and then your two or three annual weeks of paid vacation time, a day in day out, and that’s what happens to your life… That’s what passes for life, I should say: that’s what passes for happiness, for most people. Guys like Dan, they’re like sleepwalkers’ she said, ‘and nothing ever jolts them awake.'"
Several times in the book, the reader is confronted with the idea of “being alive.” To each character, this means something else. In the apocalyptic world, for Kirsten, when she was on stage and acting - doing the most pure form of what she felt she was meant to do - that was alive to her. This is juxtaposed next to Arthur who started out with the passion for acting, but was consumed by fame and the want for approval. In Kirsten’s apocalyptic world, her passions were pure. In Arthur’s perfect world without decay, his passions were corrupted and mislaid. And yet, Mandel pulls from the famous TV show, Star Trek, the phrase “Because survival is insufficient” connecting human kind to the bigger pull toward being awake. Survival isn’t was we all long for. And yet, we are all distracted in some way from the bigger desires and dreams that are inside.
Many readers will comment on Mandel’s creatively woven stories that are intertwined in specifically crafted ways for each of the characters. For me personally, this was the thing that I love/hated about the book. I loved the fact that her sliding timeline was so easily read. However even though it was beautiful to read and a wonderfully constructed book, in my realist mind, life never pans out so perfectly. Things are much more of a mess. Sometimes, we will never know why things happen or how we influence the people around us. Yes, this is a novel carefully crafted to create a story that is meant to awe and inspire. However, I don’t like it when author’s “play God” to show how skilled they are at writing plot lines that tie up in a pretty bow at the end to say, “Look what I can do!” I am sure that this was not Mandel’s intentions and I do not mean these comments as a negative retort. They are merely meant to open up the mind to the thought that it might have been worked out too perfectly to manipulate the reader to think and feel a certain way about her characters and story line. One of the things that I enjoy very much about books - well, art in general - is that it is ultimately the reader’s view in which the book is understood, not how the author wrote it. The same book can be interpreted in different ways by multiple readers depending on their own presuppositions, thoughts and feelings, and experiences in life. I think that when the writer plays out the story perfectly, some of that magic is lost.
I give this book a 4/5 starts and would recommend this book to a variety of readers. As I have shared, Mandel’s writing style is fluid as she switches from character to character, making it easy to understand for any reader who wants to explore the topic of a post apocalyptic world. I would recommend it to high school and older, if the topic isn’t too triggering.
Mandel writes this thrilling but complicated tale of exploring the idea of the human condition. Her beautiful depiction of the human spirit through all the devastating situations is that it still survives. This book help the reader to see the world before their eyes in a way that brings hope at the end to everyone who reads it. Especially in this time when we feel like the world is at an end with the things we are experiencing in COVID, it is nice to read that there is still light at the end of the tunnel. Humanity always persists.
