Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh man, oh man oh man. I loved this book.
In fact, a few weeks after finishing it I was sitting on a concrete step watching a concert below on the stage, backdropped by the sun setting over the water. It was a little cool and the clouds leaked towards the horizon, turning grey, and I thought to myself, “I remember those days when we watched concerts by the water and life was pretty much perfect just before the apocalyptic plague hit.”

Station Eleven
Station Eleven

The book see-saws from the future, in which we don’t get concerts like that any more, to the present day to the past loves and lives of Arthur Leander, the actor, and wraps the strands so tightly together, so well, and it just adds to the sense of sadness at what was lost. I loved the writing, the plot, the structure of the book, everything.

In the edition I got (from Hughes & Hughes by the river in Ennis) it came with a sheet, on which two pages from the graphic novel, Station Eleven were printed. The book is by Miranda, one of the people nearly lost in Arthur’s wake and the book, which only exists in a very limited print run, is a central totem to the book (which you might have guessed, from the title).

If you like the dizziness that a David Mitchell book can inspire (like, say, The Bone Clocks), this is a book for you. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.