Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Novel)

Nominated for the National Book Award and others, this is one of those apocalyptic science fiction stories that takes a premise we’ve experienced before and turns it on its head. From various points of view we experience the collapse of our world as we know it when a deadly flu wipes out 90% of the populace. Think Stephen King’s The Stand without the supernatural angle. A better comparison might be George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides with a flavor that reminded me of Margaret Atwood. Bouncing around the timeline, from before the modern world ends and after when the survivors are scattered across Old Canada and Old America in independent townships, where life is like the old west except that the future already happened, we see how various story threads crisscross and influence each other. Mandel’s weaving of these various points of view is pretty magical, although some might say too coincidental. You know you’ve read a good book when the last passage gives you goose bumps, when all the events seem to come to an apex of idea and character evolution. I really enjoyed this thoughtful and strangely hopeful book. Yes, it’s terrifying too, the thought that all we take for granted being suddenly taken from us. But we will still survive. In all the chaos even Shakespeare will keep marching on. Grade: A