Yay or Nay: Station Eleven (Novel)

A Canadian novel! This is rare review indeed on our blog! And since Canada has been making headlines in sports news this week, a big congratulations to Bianca Andreescu for winning the U.S. Women's Open Tournament in tennis, we thought it might be nice to feature some Canadian award-winning literature, specifically one borrowed from Olga's bookshelf! Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic meets Creative fiction piece, and given that I feel Canadian literature is something that (personally) I've had a hard time getting into. It tends to either not be engaging, or just sucks in general (again in my own experience). Yet, Station Eleven as well as another Canadian novel, Unspeakable, which Olga reviews here seem to have broken the "curse" Canadian literature seems to bear! So without further ado, this is my review of Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven. 

The Story 

During a performance of Shakespeare's King Lear in Toronto, a famous actor collapses on stage of a heart attack. Days after, society collapses into divided settlements as a result of an incurable disease that kills most of the global population. Our story moves back and forth in time, from the perspective of the actor's early days as a film star to before his death, to a young actress 15 years later travelling with a performance troupe across the Great Lakes Region, the Travelling Symphony. Exploring the twists and turns that fate has in store between the famous actor, his first wife, his best friend, a journalist, and the young actress as they get caught up in the clutches of an extremist prophet. 

My Thoughts 

Rare is the moment where you can mix creative fiction with post-apocalyptic styles of story-writing together and have it work in a coherent piece, and this is one of the things that stands out in Station Eleven. This is a story of five people's tales of survival-- connected through events of crisis. Its a story of when most of the world died of illness, and in my opinion, the most realistic way of how the world would respond to an apocalyptic event such as the one in Station Eleven. People abandon their homes, are quarantined in airplanes, and leave major cities. 15 years later, remnants of trash from the "Old World" litter the streets as memories, airports become museums, and time is counted in years from the first day that the world died. It happens slowly and then all at once. Planes  are grounded, newstations turn off one-by-one, and all of this seems eerily real. I could see these types of events happening in real life. That's a part you'll notice the most, is that the description of the world ending is something that (despite what the media says about zombie apocalypses and alien invasions) could and would happen. 

Secondly, the prose of this novel is amazing, and some of the best and most descriptive writing I've seen in a bit. For talking about seemingly ordinary things, such as travelling or remembering the "Old World", is described with such finesse, elegance, and eloquence that it's not only just "descriptive" but it makes you interested as the reader in seemingly ordinary things, such as travelling or remembering the past become interesting and colourful, and "mystified". That's another great element you'll find about this novel and it's prose. The most ordinary things are made to seem like a mystery--seemingly everyday, mundane, routine elements. You feel like the young actress living after the apocalypse trying to rememeber what the "Old World" was like, and I really appreciated being indulged and thrust into the story as much as I was. Know that if you read this book, it will pull you in right from the beginning. 

My Rating 

So while a short review, I would definitely say give this book a buy or a borrow! Its a fantastic novel and its a good, serious, book! 

My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

~Meghan