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black_cat_iiix's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
slow-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? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
Moderate: Medical trauma, Religious bigotry, Gun violence, and Death
Minor: Child abuse
shontellereads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-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? Yes
5.0
Gripping, melancholic, lyrical and deliberately halting. Emily SJM is a suberb author and I love pandemic books.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse and Murder
Minor: Rape
eharms3's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide and Terminal illness
Moderate: Child abuse and Religious bigotry
emtees's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I don’t really know how I feel about this book.
The story follows Kirsten, a young woman who, as a child, survived a horrific flu pandemic that killed off most of the human race and left them small, isolated communities without electricity, mass communication or modern medicine. A child actor before the pandemic, Kirsten is now part of a group of actors who travel from community to community, performing Shakespeare and playing music. Though she loves performing as much as she always did, Kirsten is otherwise a person dramatically changed by her experiences, and the trauma of the years since the pandemic hangs heavily over her. On an otherwise routine trip through the town of St Deborah by the Water, Kirsten and her fellow performers encounter the Prophet, a religious fanatic and cult leader. When they leave the town, they accidentally take with them something the Prophet considers his, and his menace follows them.
The plot of this book is meandering, following a whole host of different threads. There is the main plotline, with Kirsten and her friends on their journey, pursued by the threat of the Prophet. Then there is the story of Arthur Leander, a famous actor who died on stage during a performance of King Lear, right in front of Kirsten, on the night the pandemic came to North America. Some sections of the book are dedicated to Arthur’s own life; other chapters go his best friend, Clark, his ex-wife Miranda, a comic book artist, and to Jeevan, the former paparazzo turned EMT who tried to save his life. Some of these chapters tell us what happened to these characters during the pandemic, or, for those who survived, in the years after; others go back years before, to when life was still mundane. These stories are all connected, but not in the sense that there is a single through-plot to them. Rather, all these characters impacted each other’s lives in one way or another, sometimes through obvious relationships, sometimes in ways they never knew about, second hand or through their art.
There is a lot to like about this book. The author has an incredible gift for setting a scene - not just in the way she paints the picture of the post-apocalyptic world after the pandemic, full of abandoned cars that stopped when their drivers ran out of gas or died and houses that are sealed up time capsules of a world people like Kirsten can barely remember - but also in the more ordinary scenes of the pre-pandemic world, like a painfully awkward dinner party that the story returns to again and again, or a snowy night in a city. She is equally deft with character. There is a lot we don’t end up knowing about many of these characters, but I had a full sense of them anyway, just from the details the author chose to reveal. And the tone of the book is one of longing for something you can’t quite imagine, one that hangs over every moment of the story.
Art, stories, and the meaning we put into them is a major theme of this book. Kirsten’s group claim they perform Shakespeare because he, too, lived in a time of plague; they impose meaning onto his stories to help them in their own lives. Kirsten carries with her a comic book called Station Eleven, a story of isolation and loss of home and lonely travel; it was written long before the pandemic, but its themes echo in the lives of the survivors, though not in the way they did for the author. Because Arthur’s death looms large in her life, her last memory of the pre-pandemic world, she also collects any artifacts she can about him and his family, carrying around clippings of gossip magazines, trying to recreate the story of a man she only briefly knew. One of her friends clings to the memory of Star Trek episodes he saw twenty years ago. Not all this searching for meaning is positive - one character looks for such meaning in the Book of Revelations, to terrible effect - but it is all extremely human.
With all this, though, I ended the book feeling vaguely dissatisfied. While I understood that the point of the story was the distant connections between the characters, the way they impacted each other’s lives without even knowing, the main plotline was also seemingly building to a climax, and when that came, the story faltered. By the end of the book, I was sure that two things would happen - the actors would have a confrontation with the Prophet that would have some kind of deeper meaning, and Kirsten would meet Clark and learn the significance of Station Eleven - and technically both did, but neither had the payoff I was hoping for.
Spoiler thoughts about the ending: The confrontation with the Prophet fell flat for me, not just because it devolved into random violence, but because Kirsten finally met someone else who knew Station Eleven, only for him to die immediately. However, I knew she still had the meeting with Clark ahead, so I wasn’t too disappointed. But then when the story got to Clark, whatever conversation they had about Arthur, Miranda and the Prophet happened entirely off-page, and I found that frustrating. It was one thing to have characters with connections cross paths and not know it; it’s another thing when it is obvious they do know it - Kirsten left Station Eleven with Clark, and he knew it was Miranda’s work, at minimum, and probably could make the connection to the Prophet - and yet we are deprived of seeing them discuss the connection. We are left to wonder if they shared the full connection between their lives, if Clark told her who the Prophet probably was. It was nice that their other connection - that Clark had read the interview with her years before they met, and remembered her fascination with electricity - was addressed, and I suppose it was more important to see them looking to the future of a world with electricity again rather than dwelling on the past of Arthur and Miranda, but it was still frustrating. Having said that, I did love Clark finding the dinner party scene in Station Eleven and recognizing it for what it was. After so many examples of people imposing meaning onto art, it was neat to see someone reach back through the years to recognize what an artist was actually saying .
None of this ruined the book for me, and maybe my slight sense of a story unfinished was the point. I haven’t stopped thinking about this book since I finished it.
A warning: there is a TV adaptation of Station Eleven. I haven’t seen it, but I was curious about the actors chosen for the various roles, so I looked up the cast list on IMDB when I was only about halfway through the book. Don’t do this! There is a character in the book whose identity is a mystery and that mystery will be spoiled for you by the cast list, where they are listed by their true name. I don’t usually care about spoilers, but this is a mystery that isn’t ever explicitly solved in the book, though the clues are there, and while I think I would have figured it out if I hadn’t known ahead of time, I’m annoyed that I’ll never know.
Also, a second warning: If you’ve never read The Passage by Justin Cronin and you want to, be aware that a character in this book spoils the big twist of that one.
The story follows Kirsten, a young woman who, as a child, survived a horrific flu pandemic that killed off most of the human race and left them small, isolated communities without electricity, mass communication or modern medicine. A child actor before the pandemic, Kirsten is now part of a group of actors who travel from community to community, performing Shakespeare and playing music. Though she loves performing as much as she always did, Kirsten is otherwise a person dramatically changed by her experiences, and the trauma of the years since the pandemic hangs heavily over her. On an otherwise routine trip through the town of St Deborah by the Water, Kirsten and her fellow performers encounter the Prophet, a religious fanatic and cult leader. When they leave the town, they accidentally take with them something the Prophet considers his, and his menace follows them.
The plot of this book is meandering, following a whole host of different threads. There is the main plotline, with Kirsten and her friends on their journey, pursued by the threat of the Prophet. Then there is the story of Arthur Leander, a famous actor who died on stage during a performance of King Lear, right in front of Kirsten, on the night the pandemic came to North America. Some sections of the book are dedicated to Arthur’s own life; other chapters go his best friend, Clark, his ex-wife Miranda, a comic book artist, and to Jeevan, the former paparazzo turned EMT who tried to save his life. Some of these chapters tell us what happened to these characters during the pandemic, or, for those who survived, in the years after; others go back years before, to when life was still mundane. These stories are all connected, but not in the sense that there is a single through-plot to them. Rather, all these characters impacted each other’s lives in one way or another, sometimes through obvious relationships, sometimes in ways they never knew about, second hand or through their art.
There is a lot to like about this book. The author has an incredible gift for setting a scene - not just in the way she paints the picture of the post-apocalyptic world after the pandemic, full of abandoned cars that stopped when their drivers ran out of gas or died and houses that are sealed up time capsules of a world people like Kirsten can barely remember - but also in the more ordinary scenes of the pre-pandemic world, like a painfully awkward dinner party that the story returns to again and again, or a snowy night in a city. She is equally deft with character. There is a lot we don’t end up knowing about many of these characters, but I had a full sense of them anyway, just from the details the author chose to reveal. And the tone of the book is one of longing for something you can’t quite imagine, one that hangs over every moment of the story.
Art, stories, and the meaning we put into them is a major theme of this book. Kirsten’s group claim they perform Shakespeare because he, too, lived in a time of plague; they impose meaning onto his stories to help them in their own lives. Kirsten carries with her a comic book called Station Eleven, a story of isolation and loss of home and lonely travel; it was written long before the pandemic, but its themes echo in the lives of the survivors, though not in the way they did for the author. Because Arthur’s death looms large in her life, her last memory of the pre-pandemic world, she also collects any artifacts she can about him and his family, carrying around clippings of gossip magazines, trying to recreate the story of a man she only briefly knew. One of her friends clings to the memory of Star Trek episodes he saw twenty years ago. Not all this searching for meaning is positive - one character looks for such meaning in the Book of Revelations, to terrible effect - but it is all extremely human.
With all this, though, I ended the book feeling vaguely dissatisfied. While I understood that the point of the story was the distant connections between the characters, the way they impacted each other’s lives without even knowing, the main plotline was also seemingly building to a climax, and when that came, the story faltered. By the end of the book, I was sure that two things would happen - the actors would have a confrontation with the Prophet that would have some kind of deeper meaning, and
Spoiler thoughts about the ending:
None of this ruined the book for me, and maybe my slight sense of a story unfinished was the point. I haven’t stopped thinking about this book since I finished it.
A warning: there is a TV adaptation of Station Eleven. I haven’t seen it, but I was curious about the actors chosen for the various roles, so I looked up the cast list on IMDB when I was only about halfway through the book. Don’t do this! There is a character in the book whose identity is a mystery and that mystery will be spoiled for you by the cast list, where they are listed by their true name. I don’t usually care about spoilers, but this is a mystery that isn’t ever explicitly solved in the book, though the clues are there, and while I think I would have figured it out if I hadn’t known ahead of time, I’m annoyed that I’ll never know.
Also, a second warning: If you’ve never read The Passage by Justin Cronin and you want to, be aware that a character in this book spoils the big twist of that one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Violence
Moderate: Infidelity and Suicide
Minor: Child abuse
The main plot involves a deadly pandemic and there are graphic scenes of characters dying. A character commits suicide off-page. A case of an adult having sexual relationships with children is discussed.orchidd's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Terminal illness
Moderate: Suicide, Child death, Murder, Grief, Violence, and Gun violence
Minor: Rape, Infidelity, Adult/minor relationship, and Child abuse
bookishplantmom's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
I was curious about this book after reading How High We Go in The Dark - I had heard they were similar. And in some ways they are but in many they are quite different. This is also a pandemic story told in a series of vignettes from a range of characters lives across a period of time. Somehow this story feels particularly surreal despite it being closer to reality than HHWGITD. It reminded me more of Butler’s Parable of The Sower actually. It isn’t nearly as good in my opinion but it does take an unflinching look at some of the worst parts of humanity while also thinking through the meaning of community and civilization. The writing was not particularly impactful to me but I did enjoy how the various vignettes fit together. None of the characters stood out to me or clicked for me. Reading this I found myself reflecting a lot about how things *actually* are going two years into a pandemic vs how the author imagined it might go. A fascinating experience reading this now.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death, Rape, Pedophilia, Child abuse, Infidelity, and Terminal illness
owenwilsonbaby's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
"He woke to quiet voices. This had been happening more and more lately, this nodding off unexpectedly, and it left him with an unsettled intimation of rehearsal. You fall asleep for short periods and then for longer periods and then forever."
Compellingly written prose with a well-developed cast of characters. Whilst I wish Kristen's storyline had more events within it, I really liked the book and I think it is both hopeful and unsentimental about humanity, in a way that I suspect might be altered in the TV adaptation.
This book has a lot to say about art and community-building and the role these will play in coming crises. It felt resonant with ecological anxieties about climate change and social anxieties in the age of COVID-19. Some of the passages about process and industrialisation felt a tad oversimplified and neoliberal - surely an Amazon delivery driver or a factory worker making snowglobes has complex, nuanced feelings about their labour and their lives that goes beyond gratitude for a job - but everything else was thoughtful, interesting, well-paced and moving. I loved Kirsten and Miranda. What wonderful characters.
Compellingly written prose with a well-developed cast of characters. Whilst I wish Kristen's storyline had more events within it, I really liked the book and I think it is both hopeful and unsentimental about humanity, in a way that I suspect might be altered in the TV adaptation.
This book has a lot to say about art and community-building and the role these will play in coming crises. It felt resonant with ecological anxieties about climate change and social anxieties in the age of COVID-19. Some of the passages about process and industrialisation felt a tad oversimplified and neoliberal - surely an Amazon delivery driver or a factory worker making snowglobes has complex, nuanced feelings about their labour and their lives that goes beyond gratitude for a job - but everything else was thoughtful, interesting, well-paced and moving. I loved Kirsten and Miranda. What wonderful characters.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Pedophilia, Death of parent, Death, Medical content, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Child abuse, Confinement, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Sexual violence, Cursing, Grief, Gun violence, and Mental illness
liliaweber's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The threads of different lives are woven together across different eras - in a non-chronological arrangement of chapters that somehow flows beautifully, rhythmically, like a song.
This book is basically a meditation on a quote from Star Trek, which is a mantra often repeated by the characters themselves: "survival is insufficient." It's about why the human need to create art and tell stories is worth braving the danger of an unpredictable post-apocalyptic world. It's also about the choice to let go of what we've lost vs the drive to rebuild it, or how to balance both. I ugly cried more than once.
Three of the main characters are sympathetic, compelling, interesting. If there's any flaw in this book it's that the one character that glues the others together - the first character mentioned in the opening line - is self-centered, boring to read about, and doesn't grow. Defeating the villain is only a small sliver of the story; the main goals of the main characters are to survive a post-apocalyptic world, to uncover missing truth, and to create something worth surviving for.
This book is basically a meditation on a quote from Star Trek, which is a mantra often repeated by the characters themselves: "survival is insufficient." It's about why the human need to create art and tell stories is worth braving the danger of an unpredictable post-apocalyptic world. It's also about the choice to let go of what we've lost vs the drive to rebuild it, or how to balance both. I ugly cried more than once.
Three of the main characters are sympathetic, compelling, interesting. If there's any flaw in this book it's that the one character that glues the others together - the first character mentioned in the opening line - is self-centered, boring to read about, and doesn't grow. Defeating the villain is only a small sliver of the story; the main goals of the main characters are to survive a post-apocalyptic world, to uncover missing truth, and to create something worth surviving for.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, and Violence
Moderate: Blood
Minor: Alcohol, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide, and Trafficking
Murder, killing out of self-defense, and death from natural causes are depicted with some detail and are central to the story. The main villain of the story intends to traffick ("marry") a child but she escapes before he can. Suicide, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence are mentioned, but with very few details.mblanke's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Kidnapping
Moderate: Suicide and Child abuse
Minor: Alcoholism
ksheaffs's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
fast-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? Yes
5.0
Station 11 is my favorite kind of book, where somehow the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s subtle while you’re actively reading it but sinks in once you’ve set it down and leaves you with the feeling that you’ve just experienced something really special. In a word, it’s dazzling.
If you’re looking for a suspenseful Walking Dead esq post apocalyptic novel and nothing else, Station 11 might disappoint. Yes this plot is present but is it more a device to examine the characters and how they rebuild their identities after a catastrophic event draws a line between the world they know and a world they can’t begin to imagine. The switching pov and multiple timelines unravel a complex web of a select group of people all connected through one man. Pick this book up for its beautiful prose, its vibrant characters, its atmospheric quality, and its unpacking of the the question, “if survival is insufficient, what does it take to thrive?”
If you’re looking for a suspenseful Walking Dead esq post apocalyptic novel and nothing else, Station 11 might disappoint. Yes this plot is present but is it more a device to examine the characters and how they rebuild their identities after a catastrophic event draws a line between the world they know and a world they can’t begin to imagine. The switching pov and multiple timelines unravel a complex web of a select group of people all connected through one man. Pick this book up for its beautiful prose, its vibrant characters, its atmospheric quality, and its unpacking of the the question, “if survival is insufficient, what does it take to thrive?”
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Murder, Kidnapping, Gun violence, Child abuse, Abandonment, and Suicide