An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization?s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur?s chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.
Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten?s arm is a line from Star Trek: ?Because survival is insufficient.? But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.
Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.
Staff Choice: Sywert
What better to read during our own near-apocalyptic pandemic but a book about an actual world ending event...
Customer Review
Ironically I read this book when I was suffering from the flu ;-) I love how the author cleverly connected three different time periods, and different characters. The story was completely believable as well. Definitely a must-read for fans of dystopia.
Customer Review
A very original post-apocalyptic read. I also like this because of the way all the life stories are connected together.
Customer Review
A post-apocalyptic novel not so much about survival as it is about Shakespeare; about a traveling theatre troupe and their memories; the purpose of art; and the museums of the past we build for ourselves. Dreamy and haunting, Station Eleven lingered in my mind for weeks.
Staff Choice: Karin
Wonderful post apocalyptic fiction story. Won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and rightfully so. Wonderful characters and a very believable and creative story about a group of people trying to cope with a new way of life in very distressing times. So sorry to miss Emily when she visited ABC in Amsterdam in 2015.