Vintage Station Eleven Paperback – Big Book, 2 June 2015

It all begins an evening in Toronto. A man goes to see King Lear with his girlfriend. A famous actor plays Lear but during the madness scene he collapses on stage. The man, who has medical training rushes to the stage to help but the famous actor dies. He goes out of the theatre. It's night, everyone is gone, his girlfriend didn't wait for him. He starts walking back home when he receives a call on his mobile from one of his friend who works in a hospital. He tells him to stock on food and to lock himself in his flat: a pandemic is spreading.Station Eleven isn't your usual apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic novel: the focus isn't the pandemic itself. The story isn't a linear one and alternates, without any obvious logic at first, between moments before the pandemic, during the pandemic or after it. The reader realises quite quickly that the focus actually is the characters and the consequences of the pandemic on them. There's no epic tale of survival, but tales of self-discovery and how to find your place in this world.I have really loved the style: it's beautiful written, sometimes very striking, and Emily St John Mandel varies her narrative choices. Some readers may dislike the absence of linearity: clearly, it's not Flood by Baxter, and it can be frustrating to lose the storyline of one character without knowing if St John Mandel will go back to him or her. But this absence of linearity is actually what makes the beauty of the story: the characters' fate and their choices are examined under an unexpected angle. In a linear story, you wouldn't have felt a single shred of pity for some of them, but with this storytelling choice, they suddenly appear in a completely different light.The story doesn't really bring anything new to the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic genre, but it is gripping and sometimes very touching.It is a remarkably beautiful and emotional novel that left me speechless for a few minutes after having finished it.

Where to start? I`d say that this type of book: overhyped and poorly executed is the reason I listen to most audiobooks for free and resist buying hard copies. The first three pages have so many recommendations and glowing reviews but this is the world we live in.This book reminds me of the type of restaurant where the waiter places a silver platter in front of you. When he removes the silver lid it`s a white plate with a single golden fish finger and a squirt of ketchup on the side. The price for this culinary masterpiece?Why £10,000 of course! "This fish finger is made from a fish that had poems sang to it from birth good sir." Yikes, you look around the room and everyone seems to be enjoying their single fish finger so who are you to complain.The novel starts ok but just as it starts to get interesting it jumps to the future. It plods and becomes a chore to read so much so I would have been happy to give it away or throw it in the bin. You may have already read in other reviews the back and forth that doesn`t work. I would add conversations that don`t go anywhere.As has been mentioned I could not care less who lived or if everyone died, I started to skip large chunks; whole chapters. I`d see a character that keeps getting mentioned and be like: skip, then skip. At first, it felt like cheating, but after a while, I liked it because this boring stogy book was getting smaller.What a shame: I wait years to buy a highly recommended book and get this. Top-rated Post-apocalyptic fiction to me is The Road by Cormac McCarthy.The waiter returns to my table I gawk at the final bill: "£17,000 for a fish finger!" I say.The waiter smiles thinly. "Sir £10,000 for the fish finger and £7,000 for the tomato sauce."Well, it`s highly recommended, so it must be worth it.

Station Eleven by Emily St John MandelWhen I bought this book the only thing I knew was that it was about a pandemic. As we are living a real-life pandemic at the time of this book review. I really wanted something to read that was relatable. I wanted to be able to connect to characters and see what they experienced. What I didn’t expect was the carefully constructed path that would make me sit up and consider my own life and what is import to me.The story is indeed about a pandemic that hits the world but we also get to see and learn about different characters. That old adage that we are all connected in some way, plays throughout the book. It was interesting connecting the dots and seeing the bonds. How one person’s artistic talents last long after the world collapses.It was hard to imagine what it would have been like for the world to end as we know it and have to begin again. Then the past becomes like a fairy tale to those that weren’t there. Those were the parts I really enjoyed reading. Trying to explain aeroplanes and people addicted to small tiny screens called mobile phones to a new post-pandemic generation. It would all sound so far fetched. I loved the chapter of the house raiding, it reminded me of a scene from the tv show The Walking Dead. No zombie walkers in this book although there are some pretty awful human beings that you could call monsters.The writing is beautiful and the book is easy to follow allow there seems to be so much to take in and learn. Emily St. John Mandel makes it effortless for the reader.The book played like a movie in my mind and I had actors picked out for some of the characters. Albert Finney would my Arthur and Stanley Tucci would be my Clark. I struggled to think of who I wanted to be Kirsten she just didn’t have a famous face in my head. Maybe she was just so unique I couldn’t pick one. For Jeevan, I chose Dev Patel he would be absolutely perfect. Ben Foster was my Prophet and last but not least my Miranda was Tea Leoni. That was my full cast for the imaginary movie in my head.The vulnerability is what is brought to the surface when you read this book. Take away all the luxuries we have in life and we are extremely vulnerable. No electric, no phones, no hot water or supermarkets for food. You can’t help reflect on your own life and suddenly you see how life rich we are and how we take it all for granted.Right now with the pandemic across our own world, it is disgusting to see how some people are behaving the entitlement oozing from them and me, myself and I attitude that sadly so many people have. So many people have died from our own pandemic and it has made me realise how much I want to change my own life and be more here in the now, in this actual minute. Not waiting for special occasions or holidays etc to be happy. To say how I feel and express my emotions to the people that matter and life with no regretsSo back to Station Eleven and the feelings it brings to the surface. I needed this book in my life, it brought me back to my reading zone and it made me reset and realise I can only control certain things like how I act and how I feel.Five huge stars for Staton Eleven this book wasn’t just an adventure it was packed with life lessons and it will leave you searching your own soul.

I'd been recommended this book by a number of people, however I'm cautious of this genre as I often find them too unrealistic for my taste.This novel is 333 pages long, split into 53 chapters. Short chapter usually help a book to read quickly by giving it pace so that's a good start.The story starts with a death on stage then quickly becomes more menacing as a killer flu virus spreads rapidly around the world. Lots of people with interconnecting stories are introduced and there plenty of ominous warnings about the imminent end of the world as we know it. Having established the scenario the pace slows a bit as the characters come in. It picks up again once the links start to be established and I was hooked.It's a complex story with plenty of drama. The narrative focuses on a few people who are still alive twenty years on but there are plenty of references back in time to explain what has happened since the virus first struck.There are loads of unanswered questions which gives the story a genuine feeling.Characters are allowed to develop but it is clear from the beginning that characterisation comes a second place to the descriptions of the post apocalyptic world in which they live.After the initial panic, the book becomes very reflective and this is when it is at its best. Looking back at the futility of civilisation and the strength of humanity to survive.Towards the end I found the plot stretched the boundaries, that it had successfully established, too far and I wasn't convinced that the ending matched the rest of the novel. This was always going to be a tough story to conclude and the author did a good job.

As I generally don't have long periods to sit down and read, I really liked the fact some chapters are quite short - it helped me pick it up and read a few pages when I only had a short period of time.It's not your traditional post-apocalyptic book, moving at quite a slow pace and focussing on building a picture of the world the characters live in as much as (or more than) the plot. The storyline is not delivered in linear time, occasionally casting back to pre-apocalyptic times which are used to explore flashes of the main characters' history.Obviously, the characters had clearly changed due the events in between although - at times frustratingly - it is left to the reader's imagination to think about what happened in that time and why / how it affected them. This occasionally (and intentionally) results in the reader being left to pull together quite a few strands of story from different timelines and fill gaps. This can often give the feeling the book isn't really going anywhere and, in the case of the final chapters, creates a bit of an anticlimax.The narrative of this book is not particularly extreme - most of story and characters are fairly believable - and this I think encourages the reader to reflect a little more...on things like "what would I save for the museum of civilisation?"!Overall, I would recommend reading this book but be prepared to offer it a little patience.R