Station Eleven Book Review

 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 

*Warning: This review contains spoilers*

Introduction

If there were an award for the book with the most unique plot, I would cast my vote for Station Elven. I had truly never read anything like this book before, but that wasn't what really impressed me about it. What really got to me about this book and stayed with me for a really long time after I finished was that I don't know how much this book would have resonated with me if I hadn't read it during the Pandemic. 

Station Eleven is about a contagion that spreads across the whole world and eventually leads to an apocalyptic-like situation as so much of the population died off, and because of the ensuing panic that led to the breakdown of society as we know it?

Sound eerie? 

Now, the world we live in obviously didn't quite reach this point during Covid. However, despite the fact that this novel was published way back in 2014 before anyone had ever heard the word "Covid" before, I read it for the first time in early 2022, while everyone was still wearing masks and social distancing, so needless to say I was awestruck by how well Mandel was able to take the idea of a global pandemic and run with it, given that she wrote this book nearly a decade before the real global pandemic of our times struck. 

Summary & Review 

Station Eleven follows the lives of several very different characters during their lives both before and after "the Collapse" (the contagion event that killed the bulk of the world's population). Kirsten, Miranda, Clark, and Jeevan. There is also a recurring character named Arthur Leander, an actor, who serves as less of a protagonist and more of the story's thread, the character that ties all these other very different characters together in a meaningful way. Without the inclusion of Arthur Leander, the story would be somewhat of a hodgepodge of interesting but unconnected miniature stories within one universe. Arthur is what makes this novel go together though, and it is really quite impressive the way that Mandel pulls it off. 

Miranda is one of Arthur Leander's ex-wives. Kirsten was a little girl in a stage play with him the night that Arthur suffered a heart attack and died (the same night the Collapse began). Clark was a close friend of Arthur's. Jeevan ran the stage during Arthur's heart attack and tried to save his life. 

Also 

Jeevan was once a paparazzi who took an unflattering photo of Miranda during a tumultuous period of her failed marriage to Arthur. Miranda wrote the "Doctor Eleven" comics that were given to Kirsten as a little girl and inspired her nineteen years later when she was a member of the Traveling Symphony--a post-apocalyptic entertainment group that keeps the art of theater and music alive after the collapse. By the end of the novel, Kirsten gives up the comics to Clark, who during the collapse got stuck in an airport that later became his civilization and which he turned into a museum of relics from the past. 

That same airport-turned-civilization was also where another of Arthur Leander's ex-wives, Elizabeth Colton (whom he cheated on Miranda with) ended up with her son Tyler (Arthur's son). The two lived in the airport with Clark for a long time, where the only reading material that Tyler had were the Doctor Eleven comics written by Miranda, a love of which he shared with Kirsten, as well as deeply religious texts. This is what leads Tyler to become "The Prophet," the novel's antagonist who threatens Kirsten's traveling companions all throughout the book. Unbeknownst to Kirsten, her adversary was the son of her childhood idol the entire time, and her favorite comic books were written by her idol's ex-wife. 

It's these little ironies that make Station Eleven such a unique and wonderful read because, as the reader, you get to be privy to more information than the characters are. You get to understand more fully how interconnected everyone's lives truly are, even when the characters themselves never figure out the truth of it. It's truly thought-provoking, and it feels quite rewarding once you reach the end of the book, because you have managed to keep track of all these interconnected threads and then pull back and look at the way those threads weaved together into a full tapestry. At the start of the novel, I never would have guessed that such a despicable character like Arthur Leander would be the cause of that. 

Tyler being revealed as the Prophet at the end was perhaps a bit easy to guess, and the whole "religious cult" aspect of the story was perhaps a bit cliche, especially for this genre. However, I don't necessarily mind it. It was a good way of showing how growing up during the Collapse impacted Tyler, who was only a child at the time that it began. Another thing that Mandel also does a really great job with in this novel is showing the way that people naturally cling to relics of the past for support, and even to keep themselves sane, during such hysterical times. While sometimes she shows this as being positive, like with Clark's museum or with the Traveling Symphony keeping music alive, she also uses Tyler to show the negative side of this as well. Tyler and his mother cling to religion and religious texts as a means of keeping themselves connected to the past world, and it ends up being for the worst for Tyler. 

Plus, it does add another layer of conflict to the plot. Of course, there is a survival conflict because of the contagion and also with surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. However, the Prophet allows for a secondary man-versus-man conflict to be added into the original conflict. 

Tyler's anticlimactic death--being shot and killed by a member of his own religious cult, who no longer agreed with his behavior--was perhaps a bit of a disappointing end to the novel's antagonist. However, this was probably an intentional choice on Mandel's part. At the end of the day, the Collapse was what really destroyed society and made Tyler what he ended up being, so Mandel needed to remind us that Tyler wasn't really the source of the conflict driving the plot. The Collapse was. So, she needed to end his story in a way that didn't feel like it ended every other aspect of the plot with it. 

There are also so many other aspects of the novel that aren't quite as cliche that make Station Eleven worth reading too. Particularly Jeevan and Miranda. 

Miranda was the only of the main characters not to make it to the nineteen-year time jump after the Collapse. Her chapters all take place prior, and we eventually find out it was because Miranda died from the disease during the Collapse. While I was devastated by this because I really enjoyed her character, I understood that it was necessary for one of the characters to succumb to the contagion in order for the reader to feel emotionally connected to its fatal devastation. It was also very interesting to see the way that Miranda's impact on the story continued even after her character's death. She wrote the Doctor Eleven comics that influenced both Kirsten and Tyler so heavily, after all. 

Jeevan's story is also quite unique because he is one of the only characters who remembers life prior to the Collapse, but he prefers his life afterward. Clark is stuck pining for his past life, and while he makes quite a life for himself with his museum, he never stops missing his boyfriend, who he never found out what happened to after the Collapse. Kirsten doesn't have many memories of life before. But Jeevan remembers who he was prior to the Collapse--a former paparazzi struggling to find meaning to his life--and he knows who he is now--a doctor in the new world who saves lives, who has a wife and son whom he loves. And he likes that version of himself better.

This is such an interesting perspective to include in a dystopian or post-apocalyptic novel. I personally feel that most books in these genres use the opportunity to show what the worst-case scenario for the world's future might be, how terrible things could end up being. And while Station Eleven does tread that ground quite a bit, Mandel took a leap by showing that this future isn't grim for everyone, and it's not because Jeevan is a terrible person who thrives off others suffering in the new world. He just prefers that life. It really makes the reader pause and question if the post-Collapse world in Station Eleven is really worse than the past, or if it is just different. 

Another thing I really adore about this book is the way that Mandel manages priorities based on what time period the characters are alive in. During the pre-Collapse chapters, relationships are a very big deal. Arthur cheating on Miranda with Elizabeth Colton, and their eventual divorce from each other is such a major part of Miranda's storyline and character development. However, in the post-Collapse world, Mandel uses about two lines to tell us that Kirsten had once been in a relationship with the character Sayid but cheated on him, ending it. Then she uses one line at the end of the book to say Kirsten was still in love with him. That's it. There's no relationship drama. There is no further development to their relationship than that, and it's not a major part of Kirsten's development. No love story. And that's because Kirsten is living in the post-Collapse society, and survival is their priority. Even after Sayid is one of the members of the Traveling Symphony who goes missing, it isn't a principle of romance that drives Kirsten to want to find him. It's survival. The same thing drives her to want to find all the other missing members of her group. 

While some readers may be disappointed by the lack of romance in the novel, I quite liked the way that Mandel was able to focus on what is most important to the characters living in such a life-and-death society. 

I also quite enjoy the recurring element of the paperweight in the novel. The object constantly passes from hand to hand of the different characters in the novel over the course the intertwined timelines, constantly leaving the reader to guess who is going to end up with it next. While the object itself never comes into major play, I don't really think it doesn't have its purpose in the story. The passing of the paperweight from one character to the next in such minuscule, casual ways is just another way for Mandel to show the way that the lives of all these characters are so much more interconnected than they realize. And that in it of itself is such an important theme for a novel like this, when talking about a global pandemic that impacts every person in the world in some way. Mandel needed to show the way that everyone's actions during the Collapse impacted the next person and contributed to where everyone ultimately ended up--how they all contributed the post-apocalyptic world they ended up living in. 

Final Thoughts 

Station Eleven is a brilliant novel, with a unique plot, and beautiful writing that drives home so many great concepts. It handles the themes of the interconnectivity of the world and the individuals in it extremely well. It also handles dual timelines and flashing back and forth in time in an accessible way that isn't too confusing to keep track of. It has a diverse and creative cast of different interesting characters. There are some cliches, and some points where the backstories feel like they drag a bit, but other than that, everything else is pretty substantial and well-written. Overall, I would give it 4.5 stars out of 5--easily an all-time favorite.