Every once in a while a book comes along and totally blows you away. This is that book.
Station Eleven isn't out until September but I was lucky enough to get a copy due to a work placement I had with Pan Macmillan a month ago. However, I couldn't wait until then to talk about it and think that everyone who reads this blog should pre-order it right now! The plot of the book focuses on several characters and their relationships before and after a deadly disease called the Georgia Flu wipes out 99% of the human population. I know that dystopian novels aren't exactly hard to come by these days but I promise you that this is in a different league. That's not to say that I don't love those kind of stories (Hunger Games fangirls represent) but I like the approach that Mandel has taken with this book in that it focuses on a set of people rather than the problem at large, which is that civilization has collapsed and there's no way of rebuilding it. The concept is terrifying; there is no electricity, no phones, no cars and very few people to try and fix the problem. The only thing that these characters can do is live and try not to kill or be killed along the way. A common phrase used throughout the book is a quote from Star Trek: "Survival is inefficient," which leads us on to the Travelling Symphony. The Symphony are a group of people that travel through a deserted North America performing Shakespeare plays to anyone who is happy to welcome them in to their so called town. Considering that most of the population now live in disused fast food restaurants, the word "town" is probably an exaggeration. These characters are the crux of the book and it is through them that we see what life has now become for those that have survived. There seems to be nothing to live for but their audiences relish their visits and Mandel elegantly points out that if and when the end of the world does happen what is it that we're going to cling to? Our "stuff" or the people around us? There's also a rather questionable character called the prophet who is the perfect creepy character but I'm not going to say anymore about him because he's too important to the book and I don't want to ruin it for you! Much like Margret Atwood, Mandel has left the dramatics and fight for civilization to other authors and the big Hollywood blockbusters, which are often referenced in the book in the hope of making the characters feel better but this seldom works. She has examined what it means to survive in a world where technology and the ease that it brings to our lives is so natural that even the idea of being without it terrifies us. Every sentence in this book is gripping and thought provoking and even if you're not a sci-fi loving, dystopian genre addicted reader you will still thoroughly enjoy it and, hopefully, be desperate to pass it on!
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