Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel Review

Fiction

336 pages

An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Completion: I was fully invested in this book. I would have read it and finished it even if it hadn’t been for class. What a refreshing surprise! 

(P.S. I'm so glad I don't live in a dystopian or post-apocalyptic world. I would definitely be the first to die.)

Writing/Style: St. John Mandel’s writing brings such a haunting beauty to the collapse of civilization as we know it. By writing about the world before the collapse and twenty years after it, she manages to avoid the cliches of the mainstream dystopian genre.

Mainstream dystopian novels be like...

Characters: This story has significant cast of characters, and yet they are distinct and richly developed. There are moments where you feel emotionally invested in all of them, and that’s a hard feat to pull off. Plus, even if you have your favorites, each character presents a different part of this vast post-collapse world and present different ways to react and survive in this world.

Plot/Pacing: This is not a linear plot, but it never felt jumpy or slow. St. John Mandel did a great job of weaving the pre- and post-collapse worlds together, sometimes with only a few sentences. One of my favorite examples of this (no spoilers) was when I read a chapter of minor characters in the pre-collapse world having a conversation when the story flashes forward to say:

“Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest. He died three weeks later on the road out of the city” (15).

Shivers, amiright?

World-building/Atmosphere: This book balances tragedy and hope and redemption of human relationships in a seemingly isolated world. I felt completely enveloped in the landscape of this novel.

Sub-genres (Romance, Humor, Mystery, etc.): While I wouldn’t classify this novel as a mystery by any means, St. John Mandel by going backward and forward in time slowly puts together this puzzle of the connections between her cast of characters that is surprising satisfying. As well, while the topic is serious, she does a great job of balancing it with moments of levity.

FINAL VERDICT: If you are looking for adrenaline-filled adventure through a post-civilization wasteland with cannibals, shoot-outs, and villains, oh my!, then look elsewhere. For everyone else, this is a smart, satisfying read that will leave you wanting more.