Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Adult Fiction Book Review)

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Read It Forward for the signed copy of this book! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel
Published by Vintage Books
on June 2, 2015

Genre: Adult, Literary Fiction, Post Apocalyptic
Length: 336 pages

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Literary Awards:
Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction (2014)
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction (2014)
Locus Award Nominee for Best SF Novel (2015)
Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel (2015)
PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Nominee (2015)
Sunburst Award Nominee for Adults (2015)
John W. Campbell Memorial Award Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel (2015)
Toronto Book Award Nominee (2015)
The Great Michigan Read (2015)
Women's Prize for Fiction Nominee for Longlist (2015)
The Rooster -- The Morning News Tournament of Books (2015)

Synopsis:

Kirstin Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band's existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed. 

My Thoughts:

A deadly flu virus rips through the world, killing a large portion of the population, but some survive its reach. Twenty years later, a band of actors and musicians called the Traveling Symphony move around the dangerous post-apocalyptic world, delivering Shakespearian plays to the surviving towns.

I started this book at the beginning of March 2020 when Covid-19 was really just starting to spread in the United States.
I mostly went into it blind, only having heard from several readers that it was one of their favorites of the year back when it first released. I did not know that this book was about a deadly flu pandemic that wipes out the world as we know it.
In fact, Covid-19 seems to have wiped out the world as I know it and I had a hard time concentrating on anything for most of March but I still picked this up as much as possible. My slow pace did nothing to grab my attention but by the end, it all came together beautifully. I can't stop thinking about the connections surrounding the characters before and after the pandemic. I was especially intrigued by the idea of how history would be preserved in a post-apocalyptic setting. 

 I wished the story had been more about the post-apocalyptic Symphony characters or the Station Eleven story and fewer flashbacks to a certain celebrity but it all made sense in the end and I enjoyed it more seeing the bigger picture. While I felt disappointed that the only character I really seemed to get to know was the famous but dead actor, Arthur Leander, I also really enjoyed how his life tied into so many others' lives throughout this story.

Many thanks to Emily St. John Mandel, Vintage Books, and Read It Forward for the signed copy of this book!

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