Station Eleven
Registered by 
GoryDetails
of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 4/10/2017
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
GoryDetails of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 4/10/2017 This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
I found this good-condition softcover at a local thrift shop, and nabbed it for another release copy. The story's about a post-apocalyptic world where a "Traveling Symphony" wanders between the surviving communities.
The premise reminds me of Mechanique a bit, though the tone is quite different, with this being a more realistic setting, and with the narrative spending more time on flashbacks to the lives of the characters before the plague than on the traveling troupe 20 years after. But the back-and-forth is effective, letting us learn more about the characters who did survive and the ways in which their lives intersected on the night of that performance of King Lear...
The story also turns on the very-limited-edition comic, Station Eleven, the origin of which we learn in one of those flashbacks, with others showing us how the few surviving copies got where we find them in the 20-years-after storyline.
I enjoyed the descriptions of the new world and the traveling troupe, despite the obvious hardships they'd had to survive. By the time of that storyline the few survivors seem to have settled in fairly well - the weak would have been weeded out by that time, as would any who found themselves in locations not conducive to low-tech survival - and the Symphony has become a regular source of news and entertainment as it visits the settlements on its circuit. But then they find that one of their regular stops has been invaded by a group led by "the prophet" and calling themselves "the light"; this group gets increasingly sinister and dangerous, resulting in the Symphony fleeing the town and then finding themselves pursued. [This story-arc sets up considerable suspense and then takes a back seat to more flashbacks; I rather liked the changes of pace, but those who prefer to focus on the new-world survival story might get frustrated at this point.]
I also enjoyed the flashbacks, with their increasingly wrenching images of a world about to die - and, later, of the first hours/days/weeks after that death. [That lone airplane quarantined at the edge of the Severn City airport... {shudder!}] Some scenes are touching, some funny, but most have a plaintive, inevitable note of loss, and while the book seldom goes into grisly detail, it suggests all too much as to the fates of the vast majority of humankind.
The tone tends to be detached and dry, a very calm narrative voice even when the events being described are horrifying. Most of the characters we meet are fairly calm too - perhaps because the ones who panicked were less likely to survive. There are touches of dry humor here and there, such as the description of the first post-plague days of those stranded at the airport: "At first the people in the Severn City Airport counted time as though they were only temporarily stranded. This was difficult to explain to young people in the following decades, but in all fairness, the entire history of being stranded in airports up to that point was also a history of eventually becoming unstranded, of boarding a plane and flying away."
Very neatly-woven story; I liked it very much. I would have loved to actually see those Station Eleven comics, though!
[There's a TV Tropes page on the novel.]
The premise reminds me of Mechanique a bit, though the tone is quite different, with this being a more realistic setting, and with the narrative spending more time on flashbacks to the lives of the characters before the plague than on the traveling troupe 20 years after. But the back-and-forth is effective, letting us learn more about the characters who did survive and the ways in which their lives intersected on the night of that performance of King Lear...
The story also turns on the very-limited-edition comic, Station Eleven, the origin of which we learn in one of those flashbacks, with others showing us how the few surviving copies got where we find them in the 20-years-after storyline.
I enjoyed the descriptions of the new world and the traveling troupe, despite the obvious hardships they'd had to survive. By the time of that storyline the few survivors seem to have settled in fairly well - the weak would have been weeded out by that time, as would any who found themselves in locations not conducive to low-tech survival - and the Symphony has become a regular source of news and entertainment as it visits the settlements on its circuit. But then they find that one of their regular stops has been invaded by a group led by "the prophet" and calling themselves "the light"; this group gets increasingly sinister and dangerous, resulting in the Symphony fleeing the town and then finding themselves pursued. [This story-arc sets up considerable suspense and then takes a back seat to more flashbacks; I rather liked the changes of pace, but those who prefer to focus on the new-world survival story might get frustrated at this point.]
I also enjoyed the flashbacks, with their increasingly wrenching images of a world about to die - and, later, of the first hours/days/weeks after that death. [That lone airplane quarantined at the edge of the Severn City airport... {shudder!}] Some scenes are touching, some funny, but most have a plaintive, inevitable note of loss, and while the book seldom goes into grisly detail, it suggests all too much as to the fates of the vast majority of humankind.
The tone tends to be detached and dry, a very calm narrative voice even when the events being described are horrifying. Most of the characters we meet are fairly calm too - perhaps because the ones who panicked were less likely to survive. There are touches of dry humor here and there, such as the description of the first post-plague days of those stranded at the airport: "At first the people in the Severn City Airport counted time as though they were only temporarily stranded. This was difficult to explain to young people in the following decades, but in all fairness, the entire history of being stranded in airports up to that point was also a history of eventually becoming unstranded, of boarding a plane and flying away."
Very neatly-woven story; I liked it very much. I would have loved to actually see those Station Eleven comics, though!
[There's a TV Tropes page on the novel.]
Journal Entry 2 by GoryDetails at Rotary Common in Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Tuesday, April 11, 2017
GoryDetails at Rotary Common in Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Tuesday, April 11, 2017
I plan to leave this book near one of the sculptures on Rotary Common at around 1:30 on this warm, sunny day. Hope the finder enjoys it![See other recent releases in NH here.]
