Book Review
Title: Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia
Rating: 3 Stars
I read last year The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel and absolutely loved it and I couldn’t wait to get into Station Eleven which I have heard amazing things about. We are introduced to Arthur Leander, an actor playing King Lear when he suddenly collapsed in the fourth act. A man in the audience, Jeevan, a training paramedic, obviously rushes to help but there is nothing that can be done for Arthur and he dies fairly quickly after that but Jeevan is distracted by a young girl who was also in the play, Kirsten. After leaving the theatre, Jeevan gets a call from his friend, Hua, who tells him that the Georgian Flu they have been hearing about has spread further than they thought and now it is in the city and spreading like wildfire. Hua explains that 30+ people including two nurses have died since patients came in with symptoms that morning and Jeevan needs to get out of the city or hide somewhere to wait it out. Jeevan decides to stock up on supplies at stay with his brother, Frank, who is in a wheelchair rather than returning to his girlfriend but I have a feeling Jeevan has also been exposed to the flu. The opening of Station Eleven certainly didn’t waste any time in introducing us to some characters and the epidemic that is going to wipe out most of the population as we know that some characters last a few weeks but never more before the infection catches up with them and given the times we are living in right now it hit close to home for me.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, we don’t see the immediate aftermath of the infection instead we jump 20 years were we re-join Kirsten who is now 26 and an actress in the Travelling Symphony. They are a group who move around the country performing music and Shakespeare in the new world they find themselves living in. Most of the group either don’t remember life before the infection or like Kirsten were very young when it happened apart from a few members. We join the group as they travel to St Deborah by the Water, where they are planning to pick up a former member who was left there to have her baby but when they arrive they find the town greatly changed from the last time they were there. After their performance, they end meeting the Prophet who wants one of the younger members as another wife and the conductor refuses and they quickly leave never to return as they don’t want to find out what will happen to them if they do. However, in leaving so quickly they have strayed from their usual path but they are still hoping to find Charlie and her family. We then jump back in time to follow Arthur’s rise to fame, he can from a small island in British Columbia but not many people know where this island is and he feels a sense of isolation even though he felt suffocated on the island. His mother ends up pushing him to meet with a young woman, Miranda, the niece of someone he knew and we also know that she ends up becoming his first wife but it may have been a marriage of convenience as Miranda is being abused by her current partner and Arthur helps her get out. After reading The Glass Hotel, I am not really worried about not understanding much right now as I didn’t really understand The Glass Hotel until the final 100 pages or so but I am excited to see where the story goes.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, we continue to follow Arthur and Miranda as they initially begin their affair but Miranda very quickly leaves her boyfriend and tags along, riding Arthur’s fame as she works on her graphic novel series, Station Eleven. These graphic novels are the same ones that Kirsten carries around with her as is the paperweight Tanya gave her as a child before the flu. Miranda and Arthur’s marriage only lasts three years and they ultimately get divorced before he has been cheating on her with his second wife, Elizabeth and she finds out about during a dinner they have to celebrate their third wedding anniversary which was heart-breaking for Miranda but she also felt that everything was coming to a natural end anyway and she continues to live her life. We also know that she was one of the first of Arthur’s wives to be notified of his death. One thing I have to commend Emily St John Mandel on is her character work and how she creates these characters which completely separate lives that seem to overlap in the most unusual ways. If we look at how the lives of Arthur, Miranda, Jeevan and Kirsten overlap it is amazing as seemingly insignificant events take on much more meaning when we jump into the future. Even seemingly small things like two graphic novels and a paperweight that Kirsten carry around take on a more significant meaning when we learn that Arthur’s first wife wrote the graphic novels and that only 10 copies of the first two volumes were published and the other might not have been, and the paperweight was Arthur’s taken by Miranda and ended up in the hands of Tanya who might have been another of Arthur’s lovers before his death. I honestly have no idea where the story is going which is very similar to my experience of reading The Glass Hotel so I just have to wait and see how Mandel ties everything together.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, we return to Kirsten and the Symphony after they leave the Prophet’s town and they feel like they are being watched but no one can find any evidence of this. They also find a girl named Eleanor hiding in on the caravans as she escaped because she was to become the Prophet’s fifth wife. However, soon after this members of the Symphony begin disappeared, first in ones or twos but then one day the whole company disappears leaving Kirsten and August alone as they were fishing at the time. Kirsten and August keep heading for the company’s destination hoping to find them along the way and see no sign of them, almost like they vanished into thin air but they do come across Finn, a man who used to live in the Prophet’s town and left only a few days after Charlie and her family. He tells them he knows of the Museum of Civilization but has never gone there because that is where the Prophet is from and might be filled with people like him but it is the only lead they have on both Charlie and the company but it seems like there is more going on than we realise right now. We then jump back in time to just before the flu hits where Arthur’s mysterious friend, V is publishing a book of the letters Arthur wrote them over the years which is throwing the lives of Arthur’s friends in turmoil as they are all mentioned in the letters and sometimes not in favourable lights. Arthur’s closest friend Clark realises in the light of this that his life has completely stagnated and believes that Arthur possibly feels the same way and this is highlighted when we remember what Arthur said in an interview about playing King Lear at the beginning of the novel. Things are getting a lot stranger especially in the present and I can’t wait to see what has actually been happening with the disappearances and what they mean for the novel as a whole.
As we cross the halfway mark in the novel, a slight clearer picture is beginning to emerge as we move back and forth through time. In the present, Kirsten and August are still moving trying to find the company when August realises the scar on Finn’s cheek and the symbols on the doors of certain buildings in the Prophet’s town is that of an airplane and it might means something. We then jump back in time to the night Arthur died but hours before the performance. Due to the death of his father, Arthur rings Miranda because she is the only one that will understand how is feeling because they are from the same place and he invites Miranda to the theatre that night. She goes and speaks with him but things are awkward as they have become different people from when they were married but Kirsten comes to Arthur’s dressing room. We know from Kirsten’s perspective that she doesn’t remember much of this night and doesn’t remember that Miranda was there, although she wasn’t paying that much attention. It turns out it was Miranda who gave Arthur the copies of Station Eleven which he eventually gave to Kirsten and the paperweight was mailed back to the theatre that night as well. We also hear from Jeevan again who lived out the first few weeks or months of the flu with his brother but it is becoming more apparent as time passes that he needs to leave the building as food is running out. However, Frank is paralysed from the waist down after being shot and he decides to take his own life rather than risking the world outside and potentially putting his brother in danger. Jeevan travels alone in the wilderness avoided any civilization and he seems to be slowly losing his mind out there alone and he ponders what it means to be a part of a civilization and what the flu means for the world going forward. A central theme in this book seems to be communication and civilization, what it means to be a part of them and what happens when that is taken away for good. The mystery of the disappearing people and the reason why Kirsten can’t remember a huge part of her past isn’t clear yet but I am hoping it will come together soon like it did in The Glass Hotel.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, we are in the past again but this time following Clark in the immediate aftermath of the flu and the end of the world as people know it. Clark somehow gets on one of the last flights and it happens to be the same flight Arthur’s second wife, Elizabeth is on with their son, Tyler. The plane gets diverted in Severn City Airport where they watch as the world goes to hell. In the first year after the flu, we see people try to fly planes to different destinations and never return and some people simply leave. However, throughout this year, Elizabeth gets more unhinged and passes these teachings onto Tyler. By the end of Year Two, Tyler believes like his mother that the flu was the modern version of the flood God sent to wipe out the sinners and they leave with a cult and I believe that Tyler is the Prophet. Over the next 13 years, Clark spends his time collecting artifacts from before and begins the Museum of the Civilization and he ends being given a newspaper which had Kirsten’s interview in it and he realises that there is still someone alive in the world that knew Arthur and he feels a connection to this girl even though he has never met her and I have a feeling he will soon as Kirsten and August are making their way to that very airport which has become the last hub of humanity. I like seeing the pieces of the puzzle slowly coming together but I honestly have no idea how the novel is going to end or what is going to become of these characters. It could end up being like The Mist movie where humanity is saved at the last minute but it could also go in the complete opposite direction.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, we switch back to Jeevan who is somehow still alive even after over a decade of wandering. In the end everything comes together but not in the way I’d come to expect from Emily St John Mandel and I felt a little unsatisfied with the ending given how much emotional investment I put into it and the payoff didn’t really feel worth it. However, despite this I really enjoyed Station Eleven and I will be continuing to read more of Mandel’s book but I have the sinking feeling that I started off with her best work in The Glass Hotel and nothing is going to live you to that book. I’d really recommend Mandel’s books especially to those that prefer slower paced, character driven novel as these fit perfectly for that.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Also see: The Glass Hotel
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