Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Publication date: 2014
Hell is the absence of the people you long for.The premise of Station Eleven really intrigued me: dystopian world, traveling Shakespeare troupe, all taking place in and surrounding my home Great Lakes State. Somehow these things were not enough for me. I wanted more and in the wanting, fell disappointed with what I received.
Emily St. John Mandel weaves a story connecting a hodgepodge of characters during a time of great sadness and desperation. The story begins in presumably present day Toronto at a theater performance of King Lear. Within hours, the city is thrust into a pandemic flu and survival takes on a new meaning.
The story fast forwards 20 years ahead after the so-called Georgian Flu has wiped out most of the population. We are introduced to a number of characters including Kirsten, a young actress with the Traveling Symphony who happened to be on stage for that performance of King Lear two decades earlier.
Station Eleven forces the reader to think about the not-so-romantic dystopian future. The one without electricity, mass transit, communication systems and stocked food stores. Before reading Station Eleven, I didn't know that auto gasoline goes bad after three years. (My husband, who knows of such mysteries, assures me this is true.)
Perhaps my dystopian stories are too tied up within trilogies (Hunger Games, Divergent, Matched) for me to willingly say goodbye to the characters after a single installment. What I wanted after reading Station Eleven was more. But just as the finale of The Sopranos what I learned is that life, inevitably, goes on.
Three stars
Next challenge: A graphic novel
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