Reviews with content warning for Gun violence - Station Eleven

Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

142 reviews

pacifickat's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

*Long Review Ahead...Reader Be Warned*

This book sits between genres: a mix of end-of-the-world sci-fi, literary fiction, and an odd collection of character-driven stories around a few pivotal events, told and re-told from a variety of perspectives. This is a book of frame narratives, questioning which stories and moments define other stories and moments in meaningful ways. It is structured more like a network of coral making up a reef rather than a linear A-to-B journey.

A lot of disappointed reviewers seemed to want this book to be more than it was, the plot to follow a traditional post-apocalyptic road narrative, with characters fighting for survival in a dystopian landscape punctuated by violent encounters. However, Mandel seems to resist these expected devices, focusing instead on how humans are connected across time and space, nature and technology, and generations. The pandemic in this story demarcates a divide between past and present, a clear before and after. But, is existence more than our perceived notion of time and oir relationship to pivotal moments in history? Does a web of interconnectivity carry through all existence even when we cannot perceive it, even when the world seemingly ends? What is this reality we’re living in? Is it patterned beforehand, or only when looked at it in retrospect, like a forest ecosystem growing organically together? Can meaning and beauty miraculously arise out of mundanity and messiness? Is being briefly and beautifully alive and part of a cosmic whole enough of a miracle in itself? Do we make stories, or do the stories make us? What exists because of us, and what exists outside of us?

It’s complicated.

This story dodges traditional plot structure, and instead provides nonchronological glimpses of the lives of individuals trying to find the answer to what can make existence sufficient, whether it be love, career, art, travel, memory, playing a part, rescuing others, religious fanaticism, joining a cause, controlling a narrative, collecting objects, or collecting stories. I will outline a couple major themes I found compelling, but I think this book by nature opens up a Pandora’s box of possibly reader takeaways.

1. “Survival is insufficient” but existence is beautiful, sometimes breathtakingly so.

The interwoven storylines are occasionally punctuated by rhapsodic descriptions of moonlight on water, flowers and trees, slant sunlight, an impossibly blue sky, a paperweight that looks like trapped storm clouds, an illustration of the undersea. Likewise, technological wonders such as the internet, air travel, electric lights, refrigeration, television, and worldwide shipping networks go underappreciated before the flu, yet supply curious wonder in a post-pandemic world filled with the artifacts of their once-existence. Generally, it is these non-human elements which supply miraculous beauty and wonder in spite of the mundanity and distraction of human life, the messiness of human behavior, the horror of human violence.

2. There is an interconnected, overlapping web of individuals and events across time and realities – linking pre-pandemic lives to the post-pandemic world, and a graphic novel storyline that bleeds into both.

Everything is interconnected, the natural world and human-operated technologies, yet these marvelous (and tenuous) webs exist under the radar of most. The reader has the privilege to be the one who can see how everything touches, even as those living within the connections are unable to perceive them, except on rare occasions when the curtain of awareness is drawn upward.

This seeming magic encircles and envelops conscious existence, but goes unnoticed by the humans navigating the complexities of the pre-pandemic modern world, or fighting to survive in post-pandemic reality. A repeated element of looking upward to the sky when faced with death carries throughout, perhaps searching for sufficient meaning or beauty when survival is not guaranteed and everything finally falls still. Is this akin to the sublime moment the actress dissolves into Titania on stage, her stained wedding gown becoming the adornment of a magical fairy queen?

3. The idea that “everything happens for a reason” is not the same as “everything is connected" or "the miracle of existence somehow adds up to more than the sum of its parts.”

One idea impoverishes, the other gives way to impossible wonder. One seeks to explain individual experiences, the other accepts the impossibility of grasping all the strands, and revels in the piece of reality we get to live within, and sometimes consciously perceive. The idea that “everything happens for a reason” runs against the grain of this story.

This assumption leads to a mother-son combo having excuses for regrettable behaviors, an inability to cope with present realities, benign and malicious expressions of naivete, disconnection from others due to a sense of being “chosen” or set apart from the rest for a separate purpose, and a disturbing god complex. It’s self-important, it’s controlling, and ultimately it flies in the face of the interconnectedness and beauty the reader glimpses through the cracks in each narrative.

4. Suggestions of alternate realities and universes.

A conversation about physics and a multiverse, a few mentions of ghosts and the dead following the living, and a nonlinear storyline seem to suggest that time is not as concrete as the reader and the characters might assume. What do these mean in terms of possibilities? How much are we unable to perceive? Is the web that connects existence unbound by time? Is any of this ultimately knowable? I hope her other related novels tap into this a bit more.

I'm giving this one 4 stars because I am genuinely still thinking about it and probably will continue to mull over the story for quite a while. One star down because at points the story did drag and could be a bit frustrating (where are my troupe of actors and why am I hearing about this dead actor and his ex-wives again?). All in all, a solid read.

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jillaay_h's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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potassiumk's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Wow!! What a book. At the end, I could NOT put this book down! Parts of the book made me a little emotional, especially the section taking place in the airport. At first I thought the random time skipping was annoying, but now after reading the book I think it was a really great way to write it.

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saracino's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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filipacmiranda's review against another edition

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2.0

Generally speaking, I appreciate books whose plots focus on the character's way of life. Their experiences with family and friends, covered in happiness and sorrow, success and despair, tend to make up the type of books that speak to my heart. I find them realistic and honest. None of that was the case with Station Eleven - which was a big surprise.

Although I found it was a nice story, I spent most of my reading time trying to figure out the book's goal. I'm afraid I never understood it. Besides, the fact that none of the characters resonated with me made this read less interesting and dragged on for too long.

In retrospect (and in theory), I understand why so many people loved this book. Even so, I don't think it matched my expectations at all.

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voikukka's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

Beautiful, hard to put down and gently haunting. Great build up but towards the end it felt a bit rushed and anticlimatic. Unfortunately has a colonial vibe when it comes to the world after the settler apocalypse - dissapointing as the genre has literally no limits, but not surprising.

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krispyyk's review against another edition

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adventurous funny reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Lots of stuff going on under the same theme - what makes life meaningful

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daniellekat's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.5

I'm kind of shocked by how much I enjoyed this. I would have never picked this up if it wasn't on the 2023 Canada Reads shortlist. I had no idea what to expect, and knowing that the tagged genres were not my thing, I expected to hate this. BUT WOW. I can't exactly pinpoint what I loved, but this was so good. The writing was excellent, thought-provoking and poetic without being pretentious. I am a sucker for anyone who writes about Toronto well, and Mandel did not disappoint. I liked the weaving timelines and how all the main characters fit together, but I thought there were too many auxiliary characters to keep track of. I also wasn't a fan of the book's organization, the various section titles were unnecessary. I think there is definitely a different experience reading this in the post-COVID19 era and I wonder if I would have enjoyed this as much, had I read it pre-2020.

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fkshg8465's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This is the third book by this author I have read, and I’ve loved all three of them. She tells stories that are truly unique. No template or formula but simply well woven stories of multiple (dis)connected lives. And just when I was thinking this would be a great script, I found out it was actually made into a TV series. I must add that to my watch list!

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parfait52's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

It took me several months to get through this book, which is saying something because it's fairly short. Every time I picked it up, I was interested enough. Once I put it down, though, I didn't feel the need to pick it back up. This book doesn't really have a plot so much as it has a story. And once you figure out how the story is forming and the author is doing, it's very easy to know where it's going to go. At times, I found the writing to be beautiful and profound. I found the concept fascinating, but the execution was stifling at points. There were several parts of the book that I personally found very boring and wanted to get past immediately. Overall, not a bad read. There are just books I've enjoyed more.

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