Reviews

Estación Once by Emily St. John Mandel

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mnwakeford's review against another edition

5.0

This is a dystopian novel set in a post-apocalyptic world where ninety-nine percent of the population has been wiped out by a deadly virus. What makes this book special is that it doesn’t simply follow the usual trajectory of post-apocalyptic fiction, which tends to focus on survival in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe. While the book touches on such things – and does so eloquently – the author also gives us a richly imagined meditation on humanity and on how people cope and adapt to the loss of civilization, through telling the stories of different characters whose lives are cleverly intertwined.

The narrative takes us back and forth to different points in the characters’ lives, spanning the years before the deadly pandemic to two decades afterwards. Emily St John Mandel uses great skill to effectively bring all these different strands of the plot together to create a poignant elegy for the death of civilization. It’s in the small details that she conveys this palpable sense of loss. In one scene, a character eats an orange in an airport lounge and realises it will probably be the last one he will ever eat in his lifetime. But while there is loss, horror and bleakness aplenty, this is also a story of hope. St John Mandel leaves us with a positive message. In the face of unimaginable destruction, humanity is resilient and can survive.

novabird's review against another edition

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4.0

St. John Mandel channels a very cleverly navigated, stream-lined gestalt of literary confluence that places “Station Eleven,” as both a central station, and a clearinghouse during an interregnum.

Station Eleven is an absorbing, actualized soft apocalypse novel, where the simplicities of daily life are measured in realism of a world figuratively thrown back two centuries, and where the motto of ‘survival is insufficient,’ is addressed as idealism presented in the daily rehearsals of various ‘performances.’ These two perspectives combine in a fully realized way when St. John Mandel voices poignant reminders of what has been lost and implies a strong undercurrent of striving for lasting values.

In a clear-spoken, unaffected, direct and quasi-existential/phenomenological style, St. John Mandel engages readers with her matter-of-fact tone that delivers more about the sensory and precarious physicality of living in a lonely world instead of focusing on world building. One central character is seen as losing her brother through the mundane circumstance of an infection from stepping on a nail. In another scene, the lifespan of people is described as shortened from what it had been. These simple examples drive home a real sense of an altered and depopulated world. In a tamer post-apocalypse, low level threats are accentuated and a real sense of ‘being–in the-world,’ takes precedence as survivors appreciate their more tenuous existence and this atmosphere creates an ‘every-moment’ tension that lures the reader onwards to try and redefine this new valence, to weigh the pros and cons of their new environment.

St. John Mandel deftly interweaves fragments of a papered past, present and future and indirectly comments on their contributory qualities to the canon. As a comparison of dystopian genre, The Canticles of Leibowitz, also has revered fragments/artefacts that monks prize, except that Station Eleven’s artefacts are shown at the inception, at the post-apocalyptic, beginning stage of collection.

“But these thoughts broke apart in his head and were replaced by strange fragments: This is my soul and the world unwinding, this is my heart in the still winter air.”

Station Eleven stands as a testimony to the essential human spirit and upholds the necessity of framing remembrances of experience. It also stands as a pivotal way-station, where one can weigh the significance of those artefacts that now act as reified prototypes. As readers, we too stand outside time, as does Station Eleven which symbolically figures as a lens by which to look at types of spoken literary/language formats, and how they function performatively in the relationship between author and audience over time and as we attempt to assign value.

Spoken literary/language formats are delivered alongside natural dialogue and can be found embedded in an array of forms: before and after apocalypse:

- live theatre performance,
- songs sung,
- music performed and music heard
- interviews,
- peer-performance critique

Television broadcasts; news, airport announcements, phone conversations are lost in the transition period.

Post-apocalyptic:

- comic dialogue becomes live spoken,
- biblical utterances,
- oratory teaching in the Museum of Civilization

Written literary/language formats are presented alongside framing narrative structure in various styles:
- lists
- tabloid collection: pop culture mediums; celebrity magazine, TV Guides, comics/graphic novels (thought bubbles)
- grave markers
- text
- e-mails
- letters
- first lines of new script
- personal poetry

Not needing to be lost in the shuffle are biographical excerpts read aloud. The omission of libraries as repositories of knowledge is for thematic purposes ignored in “Station Eleven.” However, newspapers get revived, and new libraries get established.

St. John Mandel gives the reader effusive deliveries of communication methods to emphasize importance sources of genres as serving as foundational works for the canon. She uses the dogma found in the Bible to stand as counterpoint to the high arts and Station Eleven, both in the novel and comic book format, and does mediate between the two. St. John Mandel suggests that any new ideologies formed in the post apocalypse will be derived from older legacies found in the printed context and reified by whoever best embodies them.

Spoiler

Near the end of the novel, mention is made about the fact that there are most likely dozens of prophets and given this, one can only wonder about the future of humankind as depicted in Station Eleven.

What I wondered about was the transmission of canons, be it pre-electronic stage, contemporary or speculative and how they fuse together to translate our culture and will continue to do so, as long as we have a society to reflect upon them.

St. John Mandel, discerningly and subtly dissolves the typical dystopian novel while at the same time disrupts the distinction between high and low arts. She does the former by avoiding doomsday pitfalls of negativity in the time lapse between the before and after and avoiding many cliché post-apocalyptic tropes. With the latter, she braids together many examples of performance art, with literary remnants suggesting an infusion or evolution. This fusion looks at the motivation and influences behind the works to give a greater context behind the human need to be seen and to be remembered, as it looks at the ambition and acclaim of Arthur and the deliberately unrecognized work and actions of both Miranda and Jeevan in their attempts to eschew public acknowledgment.

Station Eleven is as much a soft apocalyptic novel as it is a commentary on the relationship between ambition and progress with the mediator of performance. What happens when ambition is thwarted and not intrapersonally resolved? What happens when progress is naturally forced to stand at ease? Do we have to figure out new motivations for our ways of being-in-the-world? If survival is insufficient then what makes for a good life or a life well-lived? What makes us a good species? When the bulk of our world’s population genetic pool becomes extinct and when the majority of memes are bereft of interpreters and translators what will survive and continue to evolve?

The quiet reflective ending allows the reader to contemplate any question that arise as a result of this quietly extraordinary book.

St. John Mandel does not explain why electricity is cut-off, this was a question that remained unanswered.