Station Eleven – Emily St John Mandel

Synopsis:

What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.

One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in North America. The world will never be the same again. 

Twenty years later Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements that have grown up since the collapse. But then her newly hopeful world is threatened. 

If civilization was lost, what would you preserve? And how far would you go to protect it?

Review:

I loved the idea of this story but unfortunately it fell a little flat for me.

I enjoyed the pre-pandemic bits a lot more than the post which is surprising, as id usually expect to enjoy those more. The post-pandemic paragraphs were boring for me and I actually ended up skimming an awful lot of it.

I did like some of the ideas and storylines but I needed far more character driven stories to be invested in this. I just didn’t really care, which is a shame.