Station Eleven in SA Book & Challenge Lovers

May 01, 2016 Eva Thieme rated it it was amazing

Imagine a post-apocalyptic world. Not a Cormac McCarthy world where some unspecified disaster has rendered the planet almost uninhabitable and the surviving people are battling it out for the dwindling resources left to them, but a world in which 99.9 percent of the population has been killed by a devastating pandemic. What might such a world look like for the survivors?

Station Eleven gives us a believable account of such a scenario. With practically no human resources left to man crucial eleme Imagine a post-apocalyptic world. Not a Cormac McCarthy world where some unspecified disaster has rendered the planet almost uninhabitable and the surviving people are battling it out for the dwindling resources left to them, but a world in which 99.9 percent of the population has been killed by a devastating pandemic. What might such a world look like for the survivors?

Station Eleven gives us a believable account of such a scenario. With practically no human resources left to man crucial elements of the world economy, everything breaks down. Cities go dark, all transport of goods comes to a halt, communication is no longer possible, the Internet dies. The few people spared by the “Georgia flu” band together in remote communities scraping out a living-off-the land existence, and while it is chilling that even after 20 years post-collapse – the new calendar uses the collapse of the world as we know it as the new Year 0 – practically none of our modern conveniences and accomplishments have come back, the story is not without hope. Far from it. “Survival may be insufficient” is a recurring phrase among the “Traveling Symphony,” a band of actors and musicians moving from settlement to settlement to perform Shakespeare plays. How holding on to art is essential to our survival as a species, giving us hope, and dignity, and purpose, is a central theme of this book. There is the Traveling Symphony on the one hand, bringing joy and entertainment wherever they pass through. They also provide an important element of communication between far-flung clusters of habitation, delivering rumors, messages, even the first attempt at a post-collapse newspaper. And then there is “Station Eleven,” a collection of comic books about an alternate universe overseen by Dr. Eleven, loosely modeled after the Spaceman Biff episodes in Calvin & Hobbes. The few surviving books of Station Eleven are what bind the different threads of the story together, alternating between the pre-Georgia flu past, the post-collapse decades, and a particularly dangerous stretch of road for the symphony somewhere along the shores of Lake Michigan.

Station Eleven is not only a well-written story that makes for an enjoyable read, it also gives you plenty of food for thought: about our often frivolous life worrying about the wrong things, our social media addiction, our perhaps misplaced trust that things as they are will always continue that way, our need for community, and the importance of beauty for beauty’s sake. I highly recommend it, not only for lovers of post-apocalyptic themes but every lover of a good story. ...more

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Feb 02, 2021 Nicole rated it liked it · review of another edition

This was a fun read. Based on other reviews of this book though, I'm surprised I didn't find it earth-shatteringly ground-breakingly amazing. Enjoyable - absolutely! Life-altering... not really.

Lovely, solid writing (apart from the clunky beginning with some over-cooked foreshadowing); solid, likeable, yet simple characters; some intriguing plot surprises, but the pulling together of the threads felt carefully constructed rather than inevitable. So, while this was fun to read there was not reall ...more

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Dec 06, 2015 Diane V-R rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy-ya, book-club

Absolutely brilliant! I love how it all connected in the end.

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Dec 07, 2014 Chrizette rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, reviewed, dystopia, read-in-2015

I loved this one.

"Survival is insufficient".
Star Trek: Voyager

The story revolves around characters that were connected to Arthur Leander, an actor who's fame was starting to faze out. Arthurs dies on stage in the opening scenes of the book but he is the centre of this story. Almost everyone in the story can be traced back to him in one way or another.

On the night Arthur dies, a terrible flu starts to erase life as we know it. And civilisation dies.

Through flash backs we get to know Arthur, his ...more

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