Paperback, 352 pages
Published April 10, 2017 by Harper Perennial.
The international publishing sensation now available in paperback: an audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame and ambition, set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse
One snowy night, a famous Hollywood actor dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theatre troupe known as the Travelling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend and a young actress with the Travelling Symphony caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the …
The international publishing sensation now available in paperback: an audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame and ambition, set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse
One snowy night, a famous Hollywood actor dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theatre troupe known as the Travelling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend and a young actress with the Travelling Symphony caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame and the beauty of the world as we know it.
A book I have kept thinking of years after reading it. Great prose, plot, characters, universe - it has it all.
My favorite scenes are of Jeevan and Frank in Toronto as the pandemic is unfolding.
There was a lot in this I really enjoyed. Interesting characters and a fascinating set of situations, all very tightly plotted and woven together in a system that slowly became visible throughout the novel. The structure and style of it has a lot of similarities to The Passage - something the book slyly acknowledges at one point.
However, I can only give this four and not five stars because the ending - or, more accurately, the climactic point of the narrative - feels too short and brief, almost perfunctory in the way it happens. When I was getting towards the end, I was thinking that I'd missed something in the blurb and this was just the first book of a pair or a series. There was enough going on and being built up I couldn't see how it could be resolved in that space - and I'm not sure it …
There was a lot in this I really enjoyed. Interesting characters and a fascinating set of situations, all very tightly plotted and woven together in a system that slowly became visible throughout the novel. The structure and style of it has a lot of similarities to The Passage - something the book slyly acknowledges at one point.
However, I can only give this four and not five stars because the ending - or, more accurately, the climactic point of the narrative - feels too short and brief, almost perfunctory in the way it happens. When I was getting towards the end, I was thinking that I'd missed something in the blurb and this was just the first book of a pair or a series. There was enough going on and being built up I couldn't see how it could be resolved in that space - and I'm not sure it was, leaving me a bit empty when it finished.
The plot of this book is not only interesting but one that lets you think. The writing is superb and it is an overall beautiful book.
Listened to this on audiobook, which it was pretty good for. I wasn't expecting much and therefore it met my expectations. I liked the structure of weaving together all the different storylines, it was decently well written. After a while I started getting annoyed at how useless everyone was after their tech stopped functioning, it's not like ALL knowledge disappears and suddenly people are like "huh, wow, I simply cannot fathom HOW airplanes worked?" idk.
A really great imagining of sweeping pandemic and complete societal collapse bogged down by too many side stories of half-formed characters and convenient contrived coincidences that detract from what could have been a fantastic piece of post-apocalyptic fiction.
This story follows people connected to Arthur Leander, an actor who dies in the first (and last) chapters of the book. These characters are mostly survivors of a superflu which kills off 99.99% of the human race. The title comes from an elaborate comic book drawn by Arthur's ex-wife Miranda.
The book is primarily set 20 years after the apocalypse, and focuses on a traveling band of musicians and actors, who play classical music and perform Shakespeare. The theme here is the survival of culture more than the survival of humanity.
As the bard said, the play's the thing, and this post-apocalyptic world feels like a play. No gritty realism, starving dogs, or warlords. People get by. This theme carries into the flashbacks, showing various of Arthur's connections sleepwalking through their lives.
The storytelling is rich, but for me the characters feel flat. The jumps are interesting, but the tale …
This story follows people connected to Arthur Leander, an actor who dies in the first (and last) chapters of the book. These characters are mostly survivors of a superflu which kills off 99.99% of the human race. The title comes from an elaborate comic book drawn by Arthur's ex-wife Miranda.
The book is primarily set 20 years after the apocalypse, and focuses on a traveling band of musicians and actors, who play classical music and perform Shakespeare. The theme here is the survival of culture more than the survival of humanity.
As the bard said, the play's the thing, and this post-apocalyptic world feels like a play. No gritty realism, starving dogs, or warlords. People get by. This theme carries into the flashbacks, showing various of Arthur's connections sleepwalking through their lives.
The storytelling is rich, but for me the characters feel flat. The jumps are interesting, but the tale before the apocalypse is far better than afterward. The religious zealout who plays the part of the villain is caricatured at first, and less believable because of it.
This won an Arthur C Clarke award for best science fiction novel of 2015. I liked it, but I didn't love it.
