Station Eleven

I read this book in about 16 nonconsecutive hours, captivated from the first chapter. When I woke up at 5:30, rather than go back to sleep, I read this. Extraordinary. Sort of The Stand meets A Visit From the Goon Squad but more than the sum of those parts. The rare work of fiction that contains another work--the titular Station Eleven--that I would kill to see. So perfectly intertwined and plotted, but doesn't hit you over the head with the connections. I can't wait to reread it.

This is one of the few audiobooks I read this year that I think would have been better in hard copy form. (Luckily, I bought a hard copy later in the year!) The narration was good, but there were so many moving parts and different characters that I wanted something in my hands, and a little time between breaths to process parts of it.

Actually, this is the rare story I would love to see redone as a graphic novel. (I don't think I've ever said that before....)

Despite my drawbacks with the narration, this story flowed. The prose was clean and easy to fall into. The story is heavily character-driven, which a lot of post-apocalyptic stories are not, and which is why I think I enjoyed it so much: I love the human aspect of the end of the world; of watching new rules develop for society, of seeing social classes and different personalities rise and fall as their world shifts around them, of getting a look at how certain people thrive or are broken by this shift. (See: The Postman and Mad Max: Fury Road.) Station Eleven has a tight and personal focus on some of the different players of this new world, all of them important in their roles but mostly unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Even as we are taken across the globe, the focus is not drawn out to show us the larger scope of the world in general (unlike World War Z). So if you're looking for a story that delves into the technicalities of how the world is broken, or one that focuses on the heroes trying to save or remake it, this is probably not the book for you.

If you don't like stories that hop all over the timeline, you probably won't like this story, though I thought that jumping around was handled very well here. The interconnecting threads of this story were beautiful to see, more like a tapestry than a mystery that needed unraveling. And, though there aren't any zombies, Station Eleven still has a decidedly eerie undercurrent thanks to the archetypical Prophet of the End Times character. (I have a serious love/hate relationship with the Prophet type. The Knife of Never Letting Go did NOT help.)

It's a strangely beautiful and quiet book.

"The veneer of civility is so thin innit?..."

Feel like I hyped this book up to much but I kind of enjoyed it, I think. Maybe a bit to calm and quiet "end of the world" story, need more drama and need to feel the struggle and hope from the characters more. That's being said, it's not a bad book and it's well written but it's not quite the book for me. It was interesting to read during a real pandemic and I can see that the story is slightly more realistic then other more action and dramatic books.

Watched series on HBO Max @ Jan 2022

This book was gripping right from the get go and the mouse interagency thing is that it didn't go in any of the directions that I expected to! It held my attention right through but I felt like it ended really abruptly. I'd LOVE a sequel!

To write a summary of this novel would take too long in the Goodreads format, in my opinion. It jumps around a timeline where the central event is the Georgia Flu, a strain of flu that kills within 48 hours of contraction and wipes out perhaps 99% of the world. The main storyline follows Kirsten, a member of the Traveling Symphony, a group of actors and musicians who perform Shakespeare and classical music for the small communities that have sprung up 20 years after the flu. After Kirsten and her friends accidentally anger a doomsday cult prophet, we jump back and forth along the timeline to see how characters from Kirsten's past and present have affected each other in this ravaged new world, leading to an ending that is an elegy to human connection. A beautiful novel.

4*

RTC

I was mesmerized from beginning to end

I've had this on my TBR pile forever and heard some hype about the TV series, so I wanted to read it before watching. I finished the book, and two TV episodes in, I'm learning the TV adaptation is a very adapted. There are characters with the same name and an apocalypse and a traveling symphony, and so far that's basically it. I generally don't mind story diversions, but the TV show has not captured my interest except that I keep comparing its plot to the book. So I probably won't be continue on with the show.

The book itself--I'm not entirely sure how I felt about this one. I love post-apocalyptic fiction, and Station Eleven is unlike any I've read before yet very familiar. I enjoyed the characters' connections, but at the same time, the survivors' threads didn't feel realistic in the end. It was ultimately an entertaining read that I won't be picking up again.

I loved the narration though--I thought the vocalizations and character interpretations were spot on.