Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Rating: ★★★★★
I think I just found a new book to add to my short list of favorites. Station Eleven is perfect. In it's most basic form it is an apocalyptic novel about a traveling Shakespeare company, but it is so much more than that. We see snippets of lives before the end of civilization. We see the importance of art after the end of civilization. We see the hope that civilization may one day be reestablished. As a theatre major I was brought to tears by this book. I firmly believe that art is vital- survival alone is not enough. This book shows the importance of art as the world as we know it comes to an end.
This story is brilliantly crafted. The writing is so captivating I felt as if I had been plunged into the story. I very rarely say this, but I was almost as immersed in this world as am in the Harry Potter world every time I read the series. It is really that well crafted. The beginning and the end mirror each other in such a beautiful way. I was not left feeling sorry for these people wandering the earth. I was given hope that they could indeed build whole, happy lives in the wake of disaster.
SPOILERS
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The first two chapters of this book absolutely dazzled me. I was in love after just fifteen pages. At the end of these fifteen pages, when I have started to care about these characters I am hit with "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). This is the first we hear of the apocalypse, and I was absolutely ready to find out what happened. In general Mandel does an incredible job of closing out chapters. The ending of several chapters had me immediately jumping on the next one. This book was very difficult to put down.
Favorite Quotes
"All three caravans of the Traveling Symphony are labeled such, THE TRAVELING SYMPHONY lettered in white on both sides, but the lead caravan carried an additional line of text: Because survival is insufficient" (58).
"No one ever thinks they're awful, even people who really actually are. It's some sort of survival mechanism" (106).
"She had never entirely let go of the notion that if she reached far enough with her thoughts she might find someone waiting, that if two people were to cast their thoughts outward at the same moment they might somehow meet in the middle" (121).
"Hell is the absence of the people you long for" (144).
"If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it? Perhaps soon humanity would simply flicker out, but Kirsten found this thought more peaceful that sad. So many species had appeared and later vanished form this earth; what was one more?" (148).
"This is my soul and the world unwinding, this is my heart in the still winter air" (194).
"The more you remember, the more you've lost" (195).
"'The world didn't end', he said. 'It's still spinning'" (202).
