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A review by thelibraryofethos
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
5.0
It's not terribly often that you get the opportunity to read a fictional book about a pandemic during an actual real life pandemic. I wasn't about to miss that opportunity, no sir.
AND OH MY this book was terrifying.
Written in 2014. Just an imagined future - a possible future that could end this world's civilisation in a matter of days.
Reading this book right now was a surreal experience. Not only is it the beautiful kind of writing which changes the way you look at the world around you, but it also made me realise how incredibly fortunate our current situation is. How delicate.
I'd never heard of Emily St John Mandel before, but she has well and truly gained my respect with this book. I only picked it up, almost ironically, because we'd just heard that libraries were closing until who knows when and I couldn't bear to think of all these books just sat, with no hope of being read, for the foreseeable future. I grabbed as many as took my fancy. This one I should have been shelving, but after a quick glance of the blurb it went straight onto the pile to take home.
This book is not terribly large, but I really did take my time in reading it. It was more like a life-altering experience than your average story.
I was in constant amazement of the world building - the author at first seems to be jumping around in her points of view, from one random stranger to another. But the correlation is always there. And so incredibly quickly, I found myself caring for each and every character in the story. Usually with alternating points of view, I find at least one least favourite character whose parts I can rush through, in order to get back to my favourites. That was not the case at all with Station Eleven. Every word felt relevant. Every character felt so real, so layered, so personal. Relatable.
As mentioned, I don't know this author at all. There's something slightly nervewracking when you're not mentally prepared for an author's writing style, for how emotionally crippling the story is going to be. It's a readers very real and raw vulnerability.
But I was not at all disappointed with this book, at any point. Emily St John Mandel starts off strong, weaves the story pieces together beautifully, and finishes strong again. It's wonderful. This is writing at its finest.
AND OH MY this book was terrifying.
Written in 2014. Just an imagined future - a possible future that could end this world's civilisation in a matter of days.
Reading this book right now was a surreal experience. Not only is it the beautiful kind of writing which changes the way you look at the world around you, but it also made me realise how incredibly fortunate our current situation is. How delicate.
I'd never heard of Emily St John Mandel before, but she has well and truly gained my respect with this book. I only picked it up, almost ironically, because we'd just heard that libraries were closing until who knows when and I couldn't bear to think of all these books just sat, with no hope of being read, for the foreseeable future. I grabbed as many as took my fancy. This one I should have been shelving, but after a quick glance of the blurb it went straight onto the pile to take home.
This book is not terribly large, but I really did take my time in reading it. It was more like a life-altering experience than your average story.
I was in constant amazement of the world building - the author at first seems to be jumping around in her points of view, from one random stranger to another. But the correlation is always there. And so incredibly quickly, I found myself caring for each and every character in the story. Usually with alternating points of view, I find at least one least favourite character whose parts I can rush through, in order to get back to my favourites. That was not the case at all with Station Eleven. Every word felt relevant. Every character felt so real, so layered, so personal. Relatable.
As mentioned, I don't know this author at all. There's something slightly nervewracking when you're not mentally prepared for an author's writing style, for how emotionally crippling the story is going to be. It's a readers very real and raw vulnerability.
But I was not at all disappointed with this book, at any point. Emily St John Mandel starts off strong, weaves the story pieces together beautifully, and finishes strong again. It's wonderful. This is writing at its finest.