Station Eleven - Book Discussion

M

Misty Cato

New member
Our current Sweet Read is Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. To participate, read the book between April and June 2015 and jump into the discussion below.

This thread is for book discussion and will contain spoilers. For non-spoiler discussion, see this thread.

Look for nominations and voting for the third quarter Sweet Read to open here in the Sweet Reads Forum mid-June.
 
Finished this a couple of days ago...here's the review I posted at Goodreads...


“Survival is insufficient.”

This line from Station Eleven especially struck a chord with me. Emily St. John Mandel's beautifully written novel explores what would happen to our world in the event of a super-flu that wipes out 99% of the population. A familiar sounding theme in pop culture today that has been done and redone in books, tv and movies...sometimes done well and sometimes not. Station Eleven definitely falls in the former camp. Mandel's writing is absolutely amazing and within the first few pages you are in her world..probably because it is our world and the things she describes are so realistic.

But I think the overriding theme is as the quote above says. Is just survival sufficient? Or do we still need art and beauty and literature and all the things that we take so for granted in the present time.

This book is a gem. The characters are so fleshed out and the story flows between pre-flu and post-flu seamlessly.

4.5 stars.
 
Just finished this evening. I listened to it on audio and while I enjoyed it, I think I would have liked it better reading hard copy. The narrators voice is so soothing, I often found myself spacing out and I know I missed a ton of little nuances.

I loved the way the author used physical things to show relationships and how they flowed pre and post catastrophe; the comic, paper weight, a dog's name, etc. I also enjoyed all the moments in which characters (post-epidemic) reflected on the things that were important to them prior to the catastrophe. I felt like I got lots of insight into the characters and they were all so varied and yet their behavior was not always predictable.
 
I was really looking forward to reading this one, and I don't know exactly what it was about it, but I didn't like it. Didn't finish, either :( That has only happened one other time that I can remember... I always finish, even if I don't love it, but I just didn't want to pick it back up lol. So I returned it to the library.
 
I didn't love it either, Brie. I really wanted to like it and I did like some of the character development but the plot didn't really seem to go anywhere interesting, in my opinion.
 
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