Review: Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel



I picked this one up because I saw it making the rounds on Booktube and it sounded really interesting. It takes place after the apocalypse. A virus has swept the world and only a small number of survivors are left. We mainly follow a touring company of actors and musicians who travel a circuit between a number of cities and perform Shakespeare 20 years after the collapse. 

What I think is the main story is set about 20 years after the virus, but we have a number of quite lengthy flashbacks to the time before the collapse and just after. These flashbacks are interesting, as we learn the backstory of some of the characters, but some of them seem way too long and unconnected with the story. At least at first glance. 

As for the characters we follow a number of people, but they all tie back to this one particular person who dies at the very start of the book. All the rest of the characters are connected to him in some way. I thought this was an interesting way of structuring the story but at the same time, I had a hard time figuring out what was actually the main focus of the story. Was it the people and their survival after the apocalypse or was it this guy and his life and his influence on the people who survived. I just feel like the book didn’t really know which story to emphasize and it ended up being a weird mix of these two stories with no real anchor. 

The writing was beautiful. It was a slightly different style and I liked that. As for plot development it was a bit slow. Introducing characters and showing the collapse and how people survived and so on was really interesting, but there was a good chunk just past the middle where it really dragged for me. Things were coming together in the post-apocalyptic world and separate storylines were getting ready to converge, but then we just had a ton of lengthy flashbacks, that didn’t really add too  much to the story in my opinion. 

In the end I couldn’t really connect with the characters because no one seemed to be the main character, and we only got to know people superficially, and while I really liked the premise and the writing style, I didn’t really like the execution. 

This book had a lot of potential but in the end it fell kind of flat for me. I gave it 2 stars on Goodreads. 2,5 if I’m feeling generous.  


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