I follow Book Riot online and they wouldn’t shut up about how amazing this book by Emily St. John Mandel is, so when the ebook went on sale a few weeks ago, I bought it.
It was good. I don’t think I loved it quite as much as Book Riot did, but then it’s hard for any book to live up to those kinds of accolades.
The premise is a massive flu (an extremely deadly strain of swine flu, which tells you where the inspiration for the book came from) wipes out about 99% of all humanity. Civilization and technology crumble together. The virus acts so quickly that most people who get sick are dead later in the day or the next day. After a few days the TV stations all go dead, cell phones stop working, then there’s no electricity at all. Then the running water goes. Basically, the humans that are left are thrown back about a hundred years technologically, without any kind of government or system of law in place. And, yes, the flu was worldwide so this is true everywhere, not just North America, although some people are still holding out hope.
The book jumps around in time from years before the outbreak, to during, to about twenty years after. By Year Twenty (because an event of this sort warrants a whole new calendar) one of the main characters, Kirsten, is twenty-eight. She doesn’t remember much of life before the collapse and she doesn’t remember anything at all of the first year after the collapse. Her brother (now dead) told her it was a good thing she doesn’t remember and she believes him.
The book gets its title from a series of sci-fi comic books that take place on a space ship called Station Eleven. Kirsten only has the first two issues and it’s likely those are the only two that ever got published. Every time they raid an abandoned building, she looks for more issues of this comic book she fell in love with.
She also looks for any tabloids about Arthur Leander. He was a movie star in his day, but by the time of the collapse, he’s playing King Lear on stage. Eight-year-old Kirsten was in the play with him as one of his young daughters who appears to him as an hallucination. Kirsten remembers he was kind to her and he’s the one who gave her the comic books shortly before he died of a heart attack on stage.
Turns out the comic books were written by Arthur’s first ex-wife, Miranda. She has become a high-powered executive since divorcing Arthur, but has continued working on her passion project in her spare time and eventually spends the money to publish the first two issues herself.
Kirsten is obsessed with these comics and there are a lot of parallels between what the characters are going through and what Kirsten is going through. Not much of humanity is left and those that are left miss their home back on Earth. Some of them are trying to survive in space while others just want to go home and take their chances. They’re all stuck on this space ship together so there is no, “You go your way and I’ll go mine,” which of course leads to dissension and war.
I really enjoyed the way the book jumped around in time to show how all everything was related. Kirsten is actually in possession of a paperweight that came from Miranda, in addition to her comic books. Kirsten has no idea where these items came from. She just knows they’re beautiful and she loves them.
All in all, it is a very good book and I’m glad I read it. It makes you think about life and the choices you make and the things you have no choice in. It also made sure I’ll never take for granted the cozy life I’m fortunate enough to live in now.
What about you guys? Read anything that was recommended by someone else this week? Did it live up to your expectations? I want to hear all about it!
Photo credit: <a href=”https://www.flickr.com/photos/skylarprimm/14931822215/”>skylarprimm</a> / <a href=”http://foter.com/”>Foter</a> / <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>CC BY-NC-SA</a>