Tolog Review: Station Eleven

Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
reviewed by Teagan O'Hara

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is a captivating post-apocalyptic science fiction novel that describes the aftermath of a world ravaged by the viral Georgia Flu. Exacerbating between past and present events from the perspectives of multiple narrators, the author intertwines characters’ stories through their vague interactions.

The novel is experienced through the eyes of many people, including Arthur Leander, Kirsten Raymonde, Jeevan Chaudhary, Miranda Carroll, and Clark Thompson. It traces the entire timeline of incidents in the characters’ lives, how the modern world collapsed, and the chaos after. The narrators faced with both internal and external conflicts in dealing with ghosts of the past and the lack of advanced technology.

Station Eleven starts with the night that changed the world forever. Arthur Leander, a famous actor, is performing Shakespeare’s King Lear. He suffers a heart attack onstage, and spectator Jeevan Chaudhary, a former paparazzo, performs CPR on him, ultimately failing. Trying to keep the atmosphere as calm as possible, Jeevan comforts five-year-old Kirsten Raymonde, who was a child actor portraying one of King Lear’s daughters. After Leander’s death, his relatives and loved ones are notified of his passing. Among those people are his ex-wife Miranda Carroll and Clark Thompson, his former best friend. Coincidentally, Miranda and Jeevan have met previously when Jeevan was working for the tabloids.

The remaining living characters also recount when the virus spread and their actions that spurred the plot forward. Kirsten, who manages to omit the worst occurrences from her memory, spends two years struggling to live until she finds her current home. Miranda is on a business trip when she receives the news that Arthur has died. Catching the flu, she remains in her company’s building before eventually walking out onto the beach and dying as the sun is setting. Clark is stranded in an airport, fighting to keep the remnants of the old world alive in his Museum of Civilization.

In the present day, 23-year-old Kirsten Raymonde lives with the Traveling Symphony, a group of musicians and actors who travel from town to town performing the lost arts. Inspired by the Shakespeare she performs, the mysterious comic book, Station Eleven, that she carries, and her muddled memories of the society-collapsing disaster, Kirsten manages to survive. When the Symphony accidentally wanders into a town that is corrupted by the fanatical “Prophet,” they encounter a sinister force that threatens to tear them apart. The Prophet chases the Symphony, who is headed for the legendary Museum of Civilization in the Severn City Airport. After a terrifying confrontation at the end of the tale, the Prophet recites lines from Station Eleven, Kirsten’s comic book, which was unknowingly created by Miranda. Although it is never revealed to the characters themselves, the readers of the book come to the conclusion that the Prophet is Arthur Leander’s son, Tyler.

The conclusion of the novel makes the reader slightly frustrated, as there was a hint of a new chapter beginning in the lives of Jeevan, Kirsten, the Symphony, and Clark. The ending was a cliffhanger, leaving the reader itching for more.

Emily St. John Mandel does an amazing job at blending characters’ backgrounds effortlessly to create a fascinating novel that makes readers critically analyze their connections. The language of Station Eleven makes interesting comparisons using slightly unclear figurative language to relate the “before” to the “after” of the world.

Overall, I would recommend this book to read over and over. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the writing style was mildly complicated, but not entirely incomprehensible. Station Eleven intrigued me greatly and made me perceive the world in a new way. Sadly, there is no sequel that I can read and relish just as I did with this book, but I do see myself picking this up again and turning its pages again in the future.

Tolog Review: Station Eleven

Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
reviewed by Catherine Ziegler

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, is an intriguing book that allows the reader to travel through the lives of actors during a plague that wipes out the majority of the world’s population. Mandel’s novel has many anecdotes and affairs that captures the attention of readers. Station Eleven is an immensely wonderful sci-fi book that is a guaranteed good read for all types of readers. 

In Station Eleven, there are four main characters that largely impact and progress the plot. Arthur Leander can be easily considered the most important character in the novel. Arthur has built hidden connections with most characters featured in the plot of the novel. Although Arthur is the first person introduced to the reader, he’s also the first to die. Arthur dies onstage from a heart attack that Jeevan attempts to save him from. Arthur’s attempted savior, Jeevan Chaudhary, starts the novel as an unimportant character until he becomes a significant doctor in one of the few remaining cities that has electricity, meaning they have lights. Kirsten Raymonde is first introduced into the novel as a young girl working on the same play as Arthur. She later is reintroduced after the plague has struck as a brave young woman. The Prophet can be considered a villain in Station Eleven. The Prophet controls a ghost town that shuns people that leave his town by creating graves for them, even if they are still alive. He believes that the plague was sent by God to “clean” the world. 

Station Eleven has a plot that takes it’s time to build throughout the story. In Station Eleven, a plague strikes the world rapidly and before long traveled around the planet, killing all people it infected. In 15 years, 99% of the world’s population was dead and civilization no longer exists. The Traveling Symphony travels from settlement to settlement to perform Shakespeare to the remaining people of America while having interesting run-ins with other essential characters. 

Emily St. John Mandel frequently uses symbolism in Station Eleven. The first example of symbolism occurs when Jeevan describes a stage, “It was too transitory, all those doorways and dark spaces between wings, the missing ceiling. It was more like a terminal” (Mandel 5). In this case, Jeevan was talking about an airport terminal. Airport terminals are considered to be temporary or transitional places, like many settlements during the plague. Also, many settlements are established in airport terminals, so Mandel could also have been foreshadowing the settlements. Another example is where Arthur was raised. Arthur notes, “It’s not a hometown, actually, it’s a home island. ‘It’s the same size and shape as Manhattan,’ Arthur tells people at his parties all his life, ‘except with a thousand people’” (Mandel 72). Arthur was raised on Delano Island, an island with a population of about 1000 people, representing around the total amount of people still alive after the plague. 

In the end, I would highly recommend Station Eleven as a good “meantime” book. For readers who already love sci-fi, this novel is a must read and will grow your appreciation for sci-fi novels. If you’re a reader that dislikes sci-fi, I still recommend this book because I believe that it will change your opinion on sci-fi for the better. Readers who love dystopian novels will also enjoy reading Station Eleven. I thought the structure and plot was easily followed and well built. The details and anecdotes provided by Emily St. John Mandel were strongly influential and appreciated in the novel.