"Survival is insufficient"
What do you do when the world as you know it comes to an end?
Emily St. John Mandel's book, Station Eleven, explores this question. The book opens up with the play of King Lear, in the middle of which, the actor, Arthur Leander collapses on stage in the middle of his performance. In this scene, we are introduced to the characters who are then the focus of the novel. The story follows a traveling theatre troupe who are trying to survive in the aftermath of an epidemic that wiped out most of the population. But, to reduce Station Eleven to a mere post-apocalyptic story would be unfair. It is much more than that - it is a story of loss and survival and the uncertainties that come with starting over.
Now, while I liked and appreciated the uniqueness of the plot, it failed to deliver on certain areas.
The main issue that I had with this book was that the pacing was very slow. It was pretty uneventful for a post-apocalyptic fiction. And initially, the jump between time periods and characters got a little confusing. It had all these elements within that could have made it into a truly unique book on survival. But, it got boring. It introduced a lot of post-apocalyptic problems that weren't well explained and a lot of it seemed highly unlikely. Some of the characters in this book were just not necessary. And normally, that wouldn't be a problem. Except, in this book those characters are given their own chapters following their perspectives. And I did not want to read their backstory because I just couldn't bring myself to care enough. And that is problematic because when you're reading a novel about survival, you're expecting it to be intense and thrilling. Station Eleven was neither. Parts of it got intense but then the chapter ended and the next chapter shifted to a different person's perspective following their backstory. This sort of writing style can be very ineffective to the story because it effectively kills the suspense that it builds up.
I think that there's probably something wrong with me because everyone and their grandfather/grandmother loved this book while, I thought it was in the transition line between "okay" and "good". So, I feel strangely inadequate. Almost like I'm missing out on something that everyone else seemed to have picked up on. If anyone's reading this or stumbles upon this post by mistake (highly likely, right?), please let me know what you thought of this book? This was one of those books that I wish I read with someone else because I just had way too many unanswered questions by the end of it.
What do you do when the world as you know it comes to an end?
Emily St. John Mandel's book, Station Eleven, explores this question. The book opens up with the play of King Lear, in the middle of which, the actor, Arthur Leander collapses on stage in the middle of his performance. In this scene, we are introduced to the characters who are then the focus of the novel. The story follows a traveling theatre troupe who are trying to survive in the aftermath of an epidemic that wiped out most of the population. But, to reduce Station Eleven to a mere post-apocalyptic story would be unfair. It is much more than that - it is a story of loss and survival and the uncertainties that come with starting over.
Now, while I liked and appreciated the uniqueness of the plot, it failed to deliver on certain areas.
The main issue that I had with this book was that the pacing was very slow. It was pretty uneventful for a post-apocalyptic fiction. And initially, the jump between time periods and characters got a little confusing. It had all these elements within that could have made it into a truly unique book on survival. But, it got boring. It introduced a lot of post-apocalyptic problems that weren't well explained and a lot of it seemed highly unlikely. Some of the characters in this book were just not necessary. And normally, that wouldn't be a problem. Except, in this book those characters are given their own chapters following their perspectives. And I did not want to read their backstory because I just couldn't bring myself to care enough. And that is problematic because when you're reading a novel about survival, you're expecting it to be intense and thrilling. Station Eleven was neither. Parts of it got intense but then the chapter ended and the next chapter shifted to a different person's perspective following their backstory. This sort of writing style can be very ineffective to the story because it effectively kills the suspense that it builds up.
I think that there's probably something wrong with me because everyone and their grandfather/grandmother loved this book while, I thought it was in the transition line between "okay" and "good". So, I feel strangely inadequate. Almost like I'm missing out on something that everyone else seemed to have picked up on. If anyone's reading this or stumbles upon this post by mistake (highly likely, right?), please let me know what you thought of this book? This was one of those books that I wish I read with someone else because I just had way too many unanswered questions by the end of it.
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