Station Eleven

Hardcover, 333 pages

Fr language

Published Nov. 24, 2016 by Payot et rivages.

ISBN:
978-0-385-35330-4
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
866615101
Goodreads:
20170404

View on OpenLibrary

View on Inventaire

4 stars (6 reviews)

Dans un monde où la civilisation s’est effondrée suite à une pandémie foudroyante, une troupe d’acteurs et de musiciens nomadise entre de petites communautés de survivants pour leur jouer du Shakespeare. Un répertoire qui en est venu à représenter l’espoir et l’humanité au milieu de la désolation.

11 editions

Gripping Read

5 stars

This was recommended to me and I went in knowing very little about it.

I found it to be a really gripping novel; hard to put down. I was really excited to see how the characters lives intersected and how they handled the trauma of the devastating pandemic.

The book tells the story of the characters at various stages of their lives ranging from many years before the pandemic, to around 20 years after. This gives a really interesting perspective on the characters, and keeps the pace of the book fast and interesting.

Highly recommended!

Review of 'Station Eleven' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

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 …

Review of 'Station Eleven' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

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 …