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A review by sahanac
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
5.0
this book felt like prophecy. there's really no other explanation for emily st. john mandel to have written about a life-altering pandemic in the year 2014.
what really stood out to me about the novel, though, was the way she focused on what came next. i've seen a lot of media showing life during a pandemic and to be frank, i don't need it and i don't want it; i'm living in a pandemic and i know, firsthand, that it sucks. mandel does something different by showing a dystopia where humanity is learning to rebuild. people care about the arts, as the novel follows a traveling symphony through their yearly route. they perform shakespeare and beethoven and stop in various towns to spread that.
of course, there are some crazy people in their post-pandemic world and they have to work to avoid that, but the society mandel crafts is so familiar and so recognizable that it feels like what we could have experienced. it's not as depressing as i expected it to be, which is important, and there is a twist in the end that made my jaw drop. this is a good book for people who like dystopian fiction, you're welcome
what really stood out to me about the novel, though, was the way she focused on what came next. i've seen a lot of media showing life during a pandemic and to be frank, i don't need it and i don't want it; i'm living in a pandemic and i know, firsthand, that it sucks. mandel does something different by showing a dystopia where humanity is learning to rebuild. people care about the arts, as the novel follows a traveling symphony through their yearly route. they perform shakespeare and beethoven and stop in various towns to spread that.
of course, there are some crazy people in their post-pandemic world and they have to work to avoid that, but the society mandel crafts is so familiar and so recognizable that it feels like what we could have experienced. it's not as depressing as i expected it to be, which is important, and there is a twist in the end that made my jaw drop. this is a good book for people who like dystopian fiction, you're welcome