“Station Eleven” by Emily St John Mandel, 2014 (8 out of 10)
Let me make this clear right off the bat: I’m tired of dystopias. Weary of apocalypse. Zombies and plague and genocide were never really my thing to begin with, but wow. By 2014, I’m just done. Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” was amazing. “World War Z” by Max Brooks? One of my favorite sci-fi books ever–and if you’ve never heard the audio version–holy crap you need to. “The Hunger Games” is good in the teen-friendly version that it is, and “The Passage” by Justin Cronin had me sleeping with the lights on. But for each one of these superior books there have been a dozen (a hundred?) books, television series and movies that take the trope of a post-apocalyptic world and have dumbed it down to the point that you don’t even need to read the book–you could read the first chapter to meet the characters, and know everything else that happens. So when I heard about Emily St John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” the first time, I dismissed it. Then it started showing up on shortlists for big time awards–not just for science fiction, but for like, grown-up literature. After poking around some more, I decided I’d give it a shot.
The plot at its most basic is this– a flu devastates humanity. 99% of the world’s population is wiped out in a matter of months. The survivors are faced with the task of rebooting civilization without transportation, communications, fuel or electricity. That also means no internet. So I’d pretty much be dead right there.They’re also without families and friends–the connections that sustain us even as we take them for granted. The narrative switches back and forth between multiple characters in two time periods–the outbreak of the flu and twenty years later. The different characters and time periods all seem disconnected for most of the book–it’s in the last fifty pages or so that the narratives come together, and do so beautifully.
No internet. I’d be dead right there.
We linger in the present/near future of the outbreak just long enough to see the beginning of the end. There are brief descriptions of flu symptoms, but our main character we follow through it is Jeevan. He’s an EMT and former paparazzo who attends a performance of King Lear that will be the connective tissue for most of the main characters in the novel. We see how the outbreak affects Jeevan, but he isn’t at the center of a bloodbath or looting scenes or stockpiling an arsenal against cannibals. He gets as much food as he can–paying for it even–and then holes up with his brother until the worst of the death has passed them by. That’s it. No zombies, no horror/adventure movie style heroics. It’s a very gentle, an almost kind way to witness the destruction of civilization. Is it because of Emily St John Mandel’s Canadian-ness? Possible. The way she tells Jeevan’s story is different enough that it stands out among other, similar books I’ve read. There are a few other characters who we meet just as civilization is ending with more direct connections to the post-apocalypse, and their stories are just as interesting. Possibly more. In almost every scene though, we see more of humanity’s kindness than cruelty. They don’t survive by being more cunning, more violent, more amoral than their peers.
An almost kind way to witness the end of civilization.
Jumping ahead twenty years, the main group of characters we follow is a traveling troupe of musicians and actors. This “Travelling Symphony” has been on the road for many years by this point, and the various performers have become family to one another. One side of a horse-drawn wagon has “Survival is Insufficient” painted on the side. It’s actually a quote from ‘Star Trek: Voyager,’ and seems to be the inspiration behind the symphony, and a greater message for the book itself. To survive–having food, shelter, a big enough population to reproduce the next generation of humans–that’s important. But if we lose music, literature, art…have we saved humanity?
“Survival is insufficient.”
The “Travelling Symphony” has a goal of moving beyond survival. They perform symphonies and concertos, they perform Shakespeare. They bring a touch of humanity back to humanity. They’re also well-armed, they’re scavengers, they defend themselves against predation. They bring sympathy and humor to the book, and while we only meet a few of the players in depth, they make connections with other characters from the pre-disaster period, and there’s a warmth there that’s often missing from other dystopian literature.
“Station Eleven” gets off to a slow start. I usually give a book fifty pages to grab me before I’ll let it go, and this one took about that long to grab me. Once it did, it was one I couldn’t put down. By the end of the book it was so charming that I loved it. If you’re like me and a bit weary of the all the other brutality in apocalyptic science fiction, give it a read.