Scan barcode
A review by silverliningsandpages
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
5.0
“Hell is the absence of the people you long for”.
.
I’m SO glad that I read Station Eleven. It’s a very subtle and sensitive reflection on mortality and humanity.
.
This frighteningly plausible story is mesmerising and haunting in its lyrical prose and cinematic in scale. Full of big thoughts and profound moments, It is essentially about civilisation and all the things that truly matter. The message is that humanity needs more than to merely survive; Preservation of art, decency and kindness are vital. The narrative moves back and forth in time, and I’ve been pondering those “watershed events” many of us will have had in our lives - when there’s a “before” and an “after”, and the self-awareness and wisdom such life events bring. It also poses the question as to whether remembering and teaching about an irretrievable way of life in the past is helpful or too complicated and painful. Showing my age here, but as someone who remembers the pre-digital era, I found this novel very thought provoking about abstractions such as communications using a series of buttons: “these taken-for-granted miracles that had persisted all around them” and it also contemplates privileges such as the miracle of flight. One might expect a post-apocalyptic novel to be grim, but I found it full of hope and possibility.
.
I’m SO glad that I read Station Eleven. It’s a very subtle and sensitive reflection on mortality and humanity.
.
This frighteningly plausible story is mesmerising and haunting in its lyrical prose and cinematic in scale. Full of big thoughts and profound moments, It is essentially about civilisation and all the things that truly matter. The message is that humanity needs more than to merely survive; Preservation of art, decency and kindness are vital. The narrative moves back and forth in time, and I’ve been pondering those “watershed events” many of us will have had in our lives - when there’s a “before” and an “after”, and the self-awareness and wisdom such life events bring. It also poses the question as to whether remembering and teaching about an irretrievable way of life in the past is helpful or too complicated and painful. Showing my age here, but as someone who remembers the pre-digital era, I found this novel very thought provoking about abstractions such as communications using a series of buttons: “these taken-for-granted miracles that had persisted all around them” and it also contemplates privileges such as the miracle of flight. One might expect a post-apocalyptic novel to be grim, but I found it full of hope and possibility.