Station Eleven

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.

DNF @ 14%

Not terrible, but not good, either. Feels very book-club fiction. I'd rather the author spend less time writing about the plastic flakes of fake snow (as if we're supposed to attribute to that observation some unknown profundities that the author herself is uninterested in vocalizing) and more time actually developing the already long list of characters. Giving them Shakespeare lines to recite does not automatically give them depth or their words weighty meaning.

I badly want a literary, elegiac work of post-apocalyptic fiction (that isn't as depressing as The Road or as aggressively postmodern as Severance), but this unfortunately isn't it.

It's a very good story. I read it because it was the pick of one of my reading groups here on goodreads. I doubt I'd have chosen it myself. This is not something I usually read.

It was a really strange experience, but also a very difficult one. I read this book in June 2021. This is the first book about the global pandemic I have read since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. It wasn’t easy to read this story. Although the situation created by the author is significantly different from ours, there are so many similarities between them. That is why the hardest part for me to read was not the passages in which Kirsten wanders a devastated world, but those describing a rapidly spreading disease and dying people. These were very difficult scene because they hit so close to home.

That's why, even though it's not a long book, it took me a few days to read it. I couldn't read too much at once because I was too emotionally involved. It is always especially difficult for me to read about the death of characters that I have already met. Therefore, it was not an easy book for me.

The story begins with the death of the famous actor Arthur. We observe the further life of people who were either important to him during his life or at this last moment of his death. This way we have a picture of the experiences of life during the pandemic and after it of different people - of different ages, with different dreams and expectations.

We are following a few people, both before and after the pandemic. And in the case of Kirsten and a few others until twenty years after the outbreak, when the world changed beyond recognition. We follow the tangled turns of human fate, paths of life that intertwine and intersect. Each of the characters has a significant place in this story, each of them has a message to deliver. The author managed to draw very expressive portraits of several people. Even though it is not a long book, each character has been very well developed. They are all very remarkable as their lives are so fascinating.

As I said, it was not an easy book for me to read, but it will surely remain in my memory for a long time. This is a truly unique story and brilliantly told. I think it would make a huge impact on me even if I read it under different circumstances.

Couldn’t keep my interest

Themes of hope in post apocalyptic setting.

I absolutely loved the writing style and the connections between the characters!