In Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, civilization as we know it has collapsed, following a devastating flu pandemic. From its rubble emerges a cast of characters that dedicate themselves to preserving what was lost while navigating the new terrain of a post-apocalyptic society. The reader travels back and forth through time to bear witness to how society has rebuilt itself twenty years after the outbreak. The novel also explores the past and the different lives these characters led prior to the pandemic, inevitably revealing the thread that has connected them all to each other throughout the years.
There are a lot of aspects of this novel to admire. First, I loved the structure of the novel. The narrative switches from past to present while also peering through the eyes of many characters across time and space. The story also has snippets of interviews and letters so the reader can see the many ways these characters experience and interact with their world, both before and after the pandemic. Perhaps my favorite feature, though, is the extensive use of colons at the beginning of several chapters. Some such chapters go “An incomplete list:” and “What was lost in the collapse:.” What follows is a candid look at the world in which these characters find themselves. These chapters consist of catalogues and lists and serve to depict the downfall of society and its recovery outside of any characters’ perspective. In these moments, we get to see the world not as it’s viewed but as it truly is.
Station Eleven breaks away from the archetype of the post-apocalyptic world primarily through the importance placed on art and humanity throughout the story. The present-day narrative mainly centers around a group of actors and musicians who travel and perform in the various settlements they come across. When not with them, the present narrative takes the reader to the Museum of Civilization, a growing collection of relics of the past, including credit cards, driver’s licenses, and dead cell phones. Here, the curator spends his time explaining to those born after the collapse of civilization about everything the world had had before. For a story about a broken world, violence does not play a significant role. Sure, there is danger and conflict, but these perils exist without being explicitly graphic, and death is not something that is taken lightly. One character, August, always takes a moment to talk over the dead, saying things like “I hope it was peaceful for you at the end,” or “You have a really nice house. I’m sorry for taking your boots,” or “Wherever you are, I hope your family’s there too.” While there are plenty of bad things that happen in this world, those seem to fall to the wayside as the characters focus on maintaining and spreading their humanity.
I also really enjoyed the world within a world. One of the characters, Miranda, spends her pre-pandemic portion of the novel creating Dr. Eleven, a comic book about a world similar to the post-flu pandemic reality. In both worlds, the people that inhabit them must accept and adapt to this new and unfamiliar landscape while also struggling to let go of the world of the past.
The beginning of the book is a bit hard to follow as the reader is introduced to many characters at once. It was difficult to keep all the characters straight at the beginning, so I tried to look up their relationships with each other and in doing so spoiled a later part of the book for myself. Although it’s a lot to digest at first, the story does whittle down the cast to its most important characters and the world is easy to move through once the reader has established who’s who.
Overall, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven is an excellent novel that explores the ways people establish and maintain their humanity in the face of adversity. Here, all roads lead to one and it’s incredible to witness the different ways these characters’ lives intertwine and impact each other without their even knowing. It is truly a page turner that will leave you immediately flipping back to the beginning and reading it all over again.