Synopsis: 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 a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.
Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, 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.
Review: Station Eleven was an experience. I feel like I can't really talk about the characters in this book because we follow so many and the perspectives shift too often to get a feel for them. This is a character driven novel and it is interesting to see how different characters handled this "end of the world" scenario. I enjoyed following the Traveling Symphony more than anything else, just because they wanted to entertain people in this destroyed world. Other characters, like Arthur and Miranda, seemed like they were supposed to be interesting and important but they really weren't.
As for the story, it was sometimes really difficult to follow. A lot of books play with narration style, and Station Eleven is no different. Some chapters are pages of prose, while others are short interview scenes between characters. This made the story feel disjointed pretty often. That being said, when I sat down and read through Station Eleven, the story was incredibly engaging. I didn't care much about what happened to the characters, but I still wanted to see how they interacted with the world. It's rather hard to explain. I also didn't care for the way it shifted between before the outbreak and after. Some books pull this off well, like The Handmade's Tale, and others don't. I feel like Station Eleven fell into the latter.
Cool perspective of a traveling symphony during an apocalypse. Would have probably enjoyed this more if it just focused on that group.
3 howls
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