Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Genre: Science Fiction/Dystopia
Series: No
Brief Summary:
A pandemic has ushered in the collapse of society, with its first victim, an aging actor, setting off a cataclysm of tragic events that would forever reshape the world as previously known. The story is told from various perspectives and slides between timelines ranging from the pre-pandemic life of the fallen actor to fifteen years post-pandemic. All three main players, namely, the aging actor, the mysterious Prophet, and a traveling troupe known as the Traveling Symphony all share a common past binding them together irrevocably. It is a novel of survival, loss, remembrance, and regret, as well as a testament to the human will to survive at all costs.
Here is what Goodreads has to say:
My take:Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.
I love dystopian literature, so naturally, I give this one high marks. I usually do not like novels with sliding timelines, but this one was done so seamlessly that it was very easy to follow. I do wish a bit more had been revealed about the Prophet, but that is a very minor hiccup in an otherwise fascinating read.
The irony of the novel's topic, namely the pandemic, did not escape me. It was quite sobering on that score and made me feel really thankful that our world has gotten out of our pandemic with much more hope than the people in the novel enjoyed. In that score, it was a book of "what if's", making it easy to relate to the characters' fears that their world would never be the same. I highly recommend this one!
