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infomancer's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
sarahetc's review against another edition
5.0
Jacket copy can so often be deceiving. The jacket copy for Station Eleven says that this is the story of Kirsten, a young woman who is a member of The Traveling Symphony-- a wandering group of musicians and players bringing drama and music to a post-pandemic world. It is that. And it is so much more.
Mandel writes the story of the pandemic, The Traveling Symphony, The Museum of Civilization, and Station Eleven in a time-shifting, decentralized narrative. Kirsten is just one character of many, most united by some form of contact with actor Arthur Leander, who dies of a heart attack the night before the pandemic begins. The story grows and blossoms and builds on itself as Mandel switches narrators and time periods. The intersections are, at first, cheerful, informative, and interesting. The longer the novel progresses, the more they become intense and galvanizing.
For a novel that is probably technically dystopian, it's never depressive nor is there any obscene apocalypse porn (for lack of a better phrase). Mandel handles the contrasts gently and in a way that is very feminine-- there's nostalgia, sometimes even aching, but there's also a very no-nonsense feeling of this is how life is that lets the reader feel like his or her guides are slightly brusque but not without sentimentality.
Station Eleven is a wonderful novel and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Mandel writes the story of the pandemic, The Traveling Symphony, The Museum of Civilization, and Station Eleven in a time-shifting, decentralized narrative. Kirsten is just one character of many, most united by some form of contact with actor Arthur Leander, who dies of a heart attack the night before the pandemic begins. The story grows and blossoms and builds on itself as Mandel switches narrators and time periods. The intersections are, at first, cheerful, informative, and interesting. The longer the novel progresses, the more they become intense and galvanizing.
For a novel that is probably technically dystopian, it's never depressive nor is there any obscene apocalypse porn (for lack of a better phrase). Mandel handles the contrasts gently and in a way that is very feminine-- there's nostalgia, sometimes even aching, but there's also a very no-nonsense feeling of this is how life is that lets the reader feel like his or her guides are slightly brusque but not without sentimentality.
Station Eleven is a wonderful novel and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
aliceh90's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
3.75
tansreads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
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
4.75
“End of the world” apocalyptic novels always say more about our current society than anything that may or may not happen in the future. This book was lyrical, gorgeous and thought provoking. The grasping for beauty, for humanity, for something beyond and creating a new world was so so beautiful and like grasps at something that our world desires beyond just the surface level. When everything falls apart, what remains? It’s spell binding and while the beginning is a little slow it pulls you into an interwoven tale (sort of around a mostly unlikeable man oof) but is really about each individual character’s moments of connection and attempts at beauty in a difficult world. It’s about finding that in our current blessed lives in a way. Love love loved it and reminds me alot of severance but trying to say something a little different about our current existence and experiences.
Fave quotes:
“We stand it because we were younger than you were when everything ended, Kirsten thought, but not young enough to remember nothing at all. Because there isn’t much time left, because all the roofs are collapsing now and soon none of the old buildings will be safe. Because we are always looking for the former world, before all the traces of the former world are gone. But it seemed like too much to explain all this, so she shrugged instead of answering him.” (130)
“Alexandra knew how to shoot, but the world was softening. There was a fair chance, Kirsten thought, that Alexandra would live out her life without killing anyone. She was a younger fifteen-year-old than Kirsten had ever been.” (133)
“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.” (144)
“He was thinking of the book, and what Dahlia had said about sleepwalking, and a strange thought came to him: had Arthur seen that Clark was sleepwalking? Would this be in the letters to V.? Because he had been sleepwalking, Clark realized, moving half-asleep through the motions of his life for a while now, years; not specifically unhappy, but when had he last found real joy in his work? When was the last time he'd truly been moved by anything? When had he last felt awe or inspiration? He wished he could somehow go back and find the iPhone people whom he'd jostled on the sidewalk earlier, apologize to them--I'm sorry, I've realized that I'm just as minimally present in this world as your are, I had no right to judge--and also he wanted of every 360° report and apologize to them too, because it's an awful thing to appear in someone else's report, he saw that now, it's an awful thing to be a target.” (164)
“Jeevan found himself thinking about how human the city is, how human everything is. We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points of origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and then looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines. Jeevan was standing by the window when the lights went out.” (178)
“Once we paddled canoes to the lighthouse to look at petroglyphs and fished for salmon and walked through deep forests, but all of this was completely unremarkable because everyone else we knew did these things too, and here in these lives we've built for ourselves, here in these hard and glittering cities, none of this would seem real if it wasn't for you.” (207)
“Why, in his life of frequent travel, had he never recognized the beauty of flight? The improbability of it.” (247)
Fave quotes:
“We stand it because we were younger than you were when everything ended, Kirsten thought, but not young enough to remember nothing at all. Because there isn’t much time left, because all the roofs are collapsing now and soon none of the old buildings will be safe. Because we are always looking for the former world, before all the traces of the former world are gone. But it seemed like too much to explain all this, so she shrugged instead of answering him.” (130)
“Alexandra knew how to shoot, but the world was softening. There was a fair chance, Kirsten thought, that Alexandra would live out her life without killing anyone. She was a younger fifteen-year-old than Kirsten had ever been.” (133)
“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.” (144)
“He was thinking of the book, and what Dahlia had said about sleepwalking, and a strange thought came to him: had Arthur seen that Clark was sleepwalking? Would this be in the letters to V.? Because he had been sleepwalking, Clark realized, moving half-asleep through the motions of his life for a while now, years; not specifically unhappy, but when had he last found real joy in his work? When was the last time he'd truly been moved by anything? When had he last felt awe or inspiration? He wished he could somehow go back and find the iPhone people whom he'd jostled on the sidewalk earlier, apologize to them--I'm sorry, I've realized that I'm just as minimally present in this world as your are, I had no right to judge--and also he wanted of every 360° report and apologize to them too, because it's an awful thing to appear in someone else's report, he saw that now, it's an awful thing to be a target.” (164)
“Jeevan found himself thinking about how human the city is, how human everything is. We bemoaned the impersonality of the modern world, but that was a lie, it seemed to him; it had never been impersonal at all. There had always been a massive delicate infrastructure of people, all of them working unnoticed around us, and when people stop going to work, the entire operation grinds to a halt. No one delivers fuel to the gas stations or the airports. Cars are stranded. Airplanes cannot fly. Trucks remain at their points of origin. Food never reaches the cities; grocery stores close. Businesses are locked and then looted. No one comes to work at the power plants or the substations, no one removes fallen trees from electrical lines. Jeevan was standing by the window when the lights went out.” (178)
“Once we paddled canoes to the lighthouse to look at petroglyphs and fished for salmon and walked through deep forests, but all of this was completely unremarkable because everyone else we knew did these things too, and here in these lives we've built for ourselves, here in these hard and glittering cities, none of this would seem real if it wasn't for you.” (207)
“Why, in his life of frequent travel, had he never recognized the beauty of flight? The improbability of it.” (247)
nwawczak95's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
medium-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
tmessersmith89's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
timguro's review against another edition
hopeful
reflective
sad
3.0
Surprisingly un-bleak for an apocalypse. Melancholic, thoughtful, beautiful writing.
bbrassfield's review against another edition
5.0
Well, fuck. I loved this novel. The narrative structure the author uses really brings a sense of completeness to the story. A good example of this is that very early on we see the death of the actor Arthur on stage in a performance of King Lear, but we know almost nothing about him. Next we learn that there is a mysterious flu outbreak and people are dropping dead like Trump brain cells. For awhile we live in the post-flu world, almost a land that time forgot. Only at the very end of the novel do we return to Arthur in the days leading up to his fatal performance and the subsequent Trumping of the world. In between we as readers have lived in and explored this largely dead world from several different perspectives and because of this the final chapters carry so much more weight and impact, at least to this reader's mind.
As a side note, I like the almost Tolstoy like resolve Arthur comes to before he dies. I'm sorry that we don't get to see what becomes of this. In the post-Trump America, I hope we see traveling symphonies that go to places in order to remind lost souls grasping for hope and meaning in the Orange World we know live in, that humans are capable of great beauty in addition to great tragedy. It will light the way to a better future, despite all the death and destruction in the present.
I feel like many of us are living in an Undersea world just as in the Dr. Eleven graphic novel that Miranda writes and the novel reference throughout. We all just want to get home.
As a side note, I like the almost Tolstoy like resolve Arthur comes to before he dies. I'm sorry that we don't get to see what becomes of this. In the post-Trump America, I hope we see traveling symphonies that go to places in order to remind lost souls grasping for hope and meaning in the Orange World we know live in, that humans are capable of great beauty in addition to great tragedy. It will light the way to a better future, despite all the death and destruction in the present.
I feel like many of us are living in an Undersea world just as in the Dr. Eleven graphic novel that Miranda writes and the novel reference throughout. We all just want to get home.
roroferns's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-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? No
5.0
stellaastro's review against another edition
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0