In Case You Were Wondering... Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Hello everyone! I have been so excited to share this story with you all, because I think it is absolutely amazing.

Station Eleven tells the story of society both before and after a huge pandemic that ends up wiping out most of the earth’s population. Now, in this particular era of the world, I did not think that I would like reading about a pandemic. Usually reading is a way to escape current events, not read more about what is causing so much conflict in the world right now. But this book was very different. It did not dwell on the era when society was collapsing, nor did it focus too much on what the sick people were experiencing as they died from that highly contagious disease. Instead, Emily St. John Mandel told a single story involving many different characters and how their lives were changed- or how they ended. It was riveting from beginning to end, and it baffled me how easily Mandel created these very full and three-dimensional characters while managing to have them all be connected by one person who didn’t even live to see the pandemic happen. I’m not going to give out any details regarding this; I believe the reader deserves to find out what I mean first hand.

I love reading books that show the point of view of different characters, especially when they don’t even know how important or how much of an impact they make on each other. As readers, events or people that mean hardly anything to one character, we get to know how that ties other characters in the story together. Not only does this book open up a whole world to us that we did not know before we started reading, but we also get to know some things about that world that not even some of the characters know. I think that is such a great way for readers to get to connect and relate to the story. It is also why we have such personal emotions toward the characters and what happens to them.

Another thing that I loved about this book was seeing how Mandel crafted the new society in which the characters find themselves in. Because a lot of the book takes place 20 years after the world as they knew it ended, things have definitely calmed down a lot. While some people are still cautious of strangers, you get to read about people forming communities, and people starting to live again, not just survive. This story really touches on how art continues to power humans through the toughest of times. Pieces of art made before the pandemic are some of the characters’ most prized possessions. The performance of art is so much a part of who a few of these characters are, they actually are referred to as the instrument they play. Music and performance art are two things that have always brought people together and formed a bond, and in Station Eleven this is no exception. As they say as a reference many times throughout the book “because survival is insufficient.”

Reading this book has definitely given me an appreciation for what I do have, and makes me stop and think for a moment about everything I could lose in an instant. The world is already different because of the real pandemic, but reading about a fictional one has also played a part in causing me to hold my family and friends a little tighter, to take a look around at a full, bustling world of people with jobs and families, and truly appreciate what a wonderful world that we live in. I am encouraging you to do two things:

1. Appreciate the small things in life.

2. Read this book- trust me, you won’t regret it.

Thank you all for your support, I’ll see you next time, where I will be talking about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon!