Station Eleven is a hauntingly beautiful post-apocalyptic novel by Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel. It is a description of the days following the end of civilization, of the apocalypse brought on by an epidemic called the Georgia Flu. The lives of many intriguing and distinctive characters overlap in this tapestry of interwoven stories, all set against a bleak background of loss and emptiness. Station Eleven begins with the death of actor Arthur Leander, during a production of King Lear. Kirsten Raymonde –who was eight and acting in the same production when she witnessed his death– now travels the desolate world with a band of actors and musicians. This odd group is known as the Traveling Symphony, and they hope to keep the beauty of music and theater alive as they wander from town to town in the area that once was the American midwest. Kirsten, now in her twenties, has spent most of her life with the Symphony. She has carried with her a set of comic books about a man named Dr. Eleven, and newspaper clippings about Arthur Leander’s career and life. Kirsten remembers the night of his death –or the beginning of the end– vividly, despite the fact that she can no longer picture things like functioning laptops and air conditioners. Though these small details might seem insignificant, they come together and gain importance as the story progresses.
Station Eleven is Emily St. John Mandel’s fourth book, and it won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award. It is a combination of suspense and poetry and it draws readers in with its promise of flowing prose and small mysteries. Mandel’s “voice” is poetic and the diction she uses conveys the range of emotions felt by these survivors, as they try desperately to remember life before the Georgia Flu. In her writing, the fragility of human life and the importance of remembering the past is emphasized. In one passage, an old friend of Arthur Leander’s named Clark is one of a small group of survivors stranded in an airport. He has an idea one day, to start a “museum of civilization” in the airport lounge. Mandel describes the thoughts running through Clark’s head as he observes the objects in his makeshift museum.
“Clark had always been fond of beautiful objects, and in his present state of mind, all objects were beautiful. He stood by the case and found himself moved by every object he saw there, by the human enterprise each object had required. Consider the snow glove. Consider the mind that invented those miniature storms, the factory worker who turned sheets of plastic into white flakes of snow, the hand that drew the plan for the miniature Severn City with its church steeple and city hall, the assembly-line worker who watched the globe glide past on a conveyer belt somewhere in China. Consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes…” (Mandel 255). Immediately, this passage evokes a sense of calm, and the image of snow falling on a tiny city trapped in the glass of a snow globe. The anaphora of this passage (the repetition of the word ‘consider’) adds to the poetic nature of Mandel’s writing, and the gentle words like ‘glide’ (instead of ‘move’ or ‘slide’), are reminiscent of snow falling, and make the passage flow gracefully. Another addition to the natural sound of this passage, is the variation of sentence length. At the beginning there are a few short sentences, but as Clark begins to consider the process of making snow globes, the sentences grow and wind lazily across the page. This is due to the commas and list-like structure.
This scene is only a small, ephemeral moment in Station Eleven, but it gives an example of the way Emily St. John Mandel uses her voice and diction to add wonder to passages about mundane things, things that have taken on new significance since the world ended. The way in which the stories, the lives of characters, and the seemingly insignificant details intertwine, along with the eerie beauty of this novel make it a must-read for lovers of post-apocalyptic fiction.
(The beginning of the audio is a bit spotty but still intelligible)
I enjoyed your article. I think that you offered a good review of Station Eleven
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