A review by conspystery
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad 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? Yes

5.0

 “WHAT WAS LOST IN THE COLLAPSE: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.”

I cannot believe it took me as long as it did to discover this book; once I picked it up, I devoured it over the course of about four days, and now I am completely obsessed. I absolutely adore Station Eleven-- it’s everything its premise promises and more. 

The thing I enjoy most about this book is its depth, and its commitment to exploring that depth. I was introduced to Station Eleven by the HBO miniseries, and I loved it, so I thought I knew what to expect when I picked up the novel, but I didn’t. The miniseries is more straightforward and resolved than the book. It’s great, but after reading the novel, I kind of prefer the ambiguity-- how the characters are more morally gray, how their connections with each other are complicated, how nearly nothing is tied up neatly. A surprising amount of the book version of Station Eleven is left up to interpretation, and it serves the premise really well. 

I particularly like Jeevan in the book as opposed to the TV show (not to say I didn’t also love him in the miniseries! He was one of my absolute favorite characters!) because he’s such a great example of the difference in storytelling between the two formats. He tries to do the right thing, or that’s what he tells himself, but we see sides of him-- especially through other characters’ points of view, like Miranda-- that don’t completely line up with that image. The same can be said for nearly all the characters in the book. They’re complex, and Station Eleven centers itself around that complexity in how it presents its plot.

The writing of the book itself is also brilliant. Mandel’s writing style is unpretentious yet insightful (a friend described it as conversational); she knows exactly where to put detail so that it never becomes overbearing or repetitive. When there is focus on imagery, it’s always for a reason, and it’s always done with the wistful beauty of post-apocalyptic retrospection-- the recurring motif of light, especially around Kirsten’s character but sometimes with others, is my favorite instance of this intentionally limited, meaningful imagery. That philosophy of relative minimalism for maximum emotional impact does wonders for its thematic power.

In a similar vein, the matter-of-fact retrospective quality of the foreshadowing in this novel is exceptional. Again, Mandel does not overload the text with heavy-handed reminders of doom; the foreshadowing (or, after the outbreak, affirmations of the destruction) is limited, packed down into infrequent single sentences for maximum poignance. Even towards the beginning of the novel, while we’re still entrenched in the last days of normalcy before the outbreak hits, the foreshadowing is never meaninglessly ominous-- take the last line of chapter two, for example. Mandel’s foreshadowing always carries with it the sadness and regret of retrospection, which is a perfect match for the plot itself. 

I think I highlighted more quotes from this book than I have for any other book I’ve read in the past year, full stop. And even that can’t capture everything I love about it. The brief moments of humor caught me off-guard every time, in the best way. Chapter six is masterfully written, could be a poem on its own. Miranda’s function in the narrative and her depth as her own character is so sad yet unequivocally beautiful in its power, and I love how she has such presence over everything-- in the glass paperweight, especially, not to mention her graphic novel. The comic book’s recurring appearance as the audience is given more information to understand its connection to Miranda and Arthur is phenomenal. The recounting of Arthur’s last day-- and choosing to explore this as late into the book as it appears-- adds unmatched emotional resonance, especially with its last line. Honestly, just everything Arthur is and does is so interesting character-wise; the excerpts from the letters to V show it so well. There’s one paragraph-- “I want to do something remarkable but I don’t know what”-- that just hits so hard. “...we’re all getting older and it’s going so fast. I’m already 19.” SO good. I haven’t even written anything about Clark yet! He’s such a great foil for the other characters, in a really unexpected way! 

I think overall, Station Eleven shines in its ability to communicate so much depth in so many small, unexpected places. The less surface area an object has, the higher the pressure it can apply, and exponentially so-- this book is the same. It knows exactly where to pack its punches, and doing so results in a genuinely unforgettable, endlessly interpretable narrative, with a tragic but hopeful message about regret, human connection, and storytelling. I love this book; it’s a new favorite for me. 
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