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Station Eleven

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Station Eleven

By: Emily St. John Mandel
Narrated by: Jack Hawkins
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About this listen

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2015

Day one: The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the Earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%.

Week Two: Civilization has crumbled.

Year Twenty: A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and it threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild.

Moving backwards and forwards in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: famous actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan, a bystander warned about the flu just in time; Arthur's first wife, Miranda; Arthur's oldest friend, Clark; Kirsten, an actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed 'prophet'.

Emily St. John Mandel was born in Canada and studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. She is the author of the novels Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, The Lola Quartet, and Station Eleven and is a staff writer for The Millions. She is married and lives in New York.

©2014 Emily St. John Mandel (P)2014 Audible Studios Dystopian Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Women's Fiction Celebrity Scary Heartfelt Thought-Provoking

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Editor reviews

The Travelling Symphony, a group of musicians and actors, wander what remains of Planet Earth after a global pandemic has decimated the population, performing musical acts and Shakespearean skits for pockets of survivors who have managed to rebuild. Life has slowly settled into some semblance of normalcy — but with a new danger rising, any illusion of safety is soon shattered.

Told through the voice of multiple characters (each performed with distinction by narrator Jack Hawkins), Station Eleven is a twisting novel that jumps back and forth from the early days of the outbreak to the crumbled aftermath. It’s a stark, brilliantly crafted post-apocalyptic tale that is both adored by fans and celebrated by critics, evidenced by its 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award win.
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The story was a little confusing with all the flashbacks and flashforwards. In this book the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Makes a change from zombies though and at least some people were trying a positive approach.

The narrator had an English accent, but the novel is set in the US/Canada, and most of the characters had American or Canadian accents (I can't tell the difference and one of the points of the story was that countries didn't exist any more). This didn't spoil the book for me, but it is a little odd.

Not bad

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the issue is that the narrator is english whilst most the characters are not. whilst i get it...one of the primary characters is english....the story becomes confusing as the narrator can't do american accents, with the result being that pretty much everyone ends up sounding the same.

the story itself...a pandemic hitting the world...is cleverly put together.

distopian future. mediocre narration

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This is a dystopian novel set in a post-apocalyptic world where ninety-nine percent of the population has been wiped out by a deadly virus. What makes this book special is that it doesn’t simply follow the usual trajectory of post-apocalyptic fiction, which tends to focus on survival in the immediate aftermath of a catastrophe. While the book touches on such things – and does so eloquently – the author also gives us a richly imagined meditation on humanity and on how people cope and adapt to the loss of civilization, through telling the stories of different characters whose lives are cleverly intertwined.

The narrative takes us back and forth to different points in the characters’ lives, spanning the years before the deadly pandemic to two decades afterwards. Emily St John Mandel uses great skill to effectively bring all these different strands of the plot together to create a poignant elegy for the death of civilization. It’s in the small details that she conveys this palpable sense of loss. In one scene, a character eats an orange in an airport lounge and realises it will probably be the last one he will ever eat in his lifetime. But while there is loss, horror and bleakness aplenty, this is also a story of hope. St John Mandel leaves us with a positive message. In the face of unimaginable destruction, humanity is resilient and can survive.

Beautifully plotted dystopian novel

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A wonderful mixture of delicate and yet powerfully rich and intricate writing, beautifully read.

Wonderful.

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Love how the story jumps between characters and dates prior to, during and the years following the Georgia flu. I think elements of this book will stay with me for a long time.

It makes you wonder what if it really could happen

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You really want to hear how all the stories turn out. Fascinating to think of the world 20 years after catastrophe, how would they survive? What would the world be like? The narrator I thought was great too.

Couldn't stop listening

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I really enjoyed this and would listen again. It was thoroughly exciting the entire time and Mandel ingeniously interweaves characters lives to keep crossing.

Exciting and captivating.

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The story has its own merits to bring to this genre, and the writing is competent, but I think the structure detracts from the experience.

One of the key benefits of flashbacks/time-jumping is that it can allow you orchestrate a big reveal that is more difficult with a more linear timeline. But in this case, there was no reveal, no coming together of facts leading to enlightenment; it just fractured the story.

I also think a little too much time was spent on pre-flu days, at the cost of a rather muted post-flu account, which IMHO was the more interesting part of the story.

Not bad, but not as good as it could have been.

less than the sum of its parts

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If you could sum up Station Eleven in three words, what would they be?

Haunting, prophetic, thought-provoking

What other book might you compare Station Eleven to, and why?

I wouldn't compare this book to any other. It's unique.

Which scene did you most enjoy?

Scenes towards the end of the book where some of the threads are tied together - don't want to say too much and spoil the story for others.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes and I've listened to it twice now

Any additional comments?

This is the apocalypse but not as you've seen it before. This book follows the lives of several characters and describes the influences they have on each other, both before and after the world changes radically due to a flu pandemic. It's a story that stayed with me long after I'd finished listening.

Apocalypse with a difference

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I was pleasantly surprised that this was so much more sophisticated, imaginative and original than many other post apocalyptic stories, I really enjoyed the threads tying everyone together, and the tiny details of what it would really be like when civilisation crumbled, such as not being able to get new spectacles! The sections in the airport were fascinating, and the description of the graphic novels just beautiful. I didn't get into it immediately, but bear with it a few chapters, and you'll be hooked. Obviously the real horror of events is covered, but not in a way to just shock you, it's much more intelligent than that. I find myself thinking back to this one several months after listening. A rare find I think. Brilliant escapism but also makes you think. Great characters. Beautiful writing and very good narration. A few more chapters would've been good!

Highly original

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