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| Just a scenic Great Lakes camping trip |
"Station Eleven" is one of my favorite works of fiction in years. It's quite an understated novel, following a troupe of actors as they travel down the shore of Lake Michigan years after a flu-pocalypse caused the collapse of modern civilization. A few chapter one plot details below.
Although the book begins on the day of a massive flu outbreak (flu-pocalypse), the first chapter of "Station Eleven" depicts the more ordinary death of Arthur Leander, a famous Shakespearian actor who dies on stage of a heart attack during a production of King Lear. He is the unifying thread of the book, which follows many of the lives he touched during his own, jumping from decades before the flu-pocalypse to decades after. Memories of his life bring the characters together in unexpected ways.
Very little of the cataclysm itself is shown, because "Station Eleven" is not about heroics or the struggle for survival. It's about about day-to-day life, what it might look like in a post-apocalyptic setting, and how in some ways that isn't so different from modernity. The characters still need relationships, still want entertainment, still look up to celebrities. And doesn't that make sense? After all, people were people before modern technological society existed, and if it ever does end we'll still be people afterwards.
Verdict: "Station Eleven" is a wonderfully written, fresh take on post-apocalyptic storytelling. Rather than focusing on the calamity itself or all the trappings of modern life that were lost, the author explores the interpersonal relationships that remain. Highly recommended.
I'm glad to learn you are reading much more than reviewing. Glad about the reading more, not the reviewing less. Oh well, getting some reviews is better than none.
ReplyDeleteDon't know how I missed ever hearing about "Station Eleven," since it won so many awards & was a best-seller not long ago. I do tend to willfully ignore anything science-fictiony as unworthy of serious literary consideration, a boyish enthusiasm I've probably too smugly dismissed as having outgrown. Nevertheless you've piqued my interest with this review. And it's interesting to me that the author herself has fought tooth-and-nail against being pigeonholed as a scifi writer, not only because it might reduce sales and broader audience appeal but also because of what seems to me a technicality. She says that just because a story is set in the future doesn't make it scifi. In this case she claims the science and technology in the novel is all present-day, currently known or possible stuff. For example we know it's true that swine flu can randomly generate a pandemic-strength strain, that civilizations have unraveled and still can under such population stress, though basic human society carries on at some level (as you point out, people will still be people). All this makes me think of the Maya as our North American example. Archaeologists at first wondered what happened to them, these "lost" people: where did they go, how did they just vanish, before realizing oh, they're still here, living in the same place, just no longer doing the same civilization-scale things.
So yes, I'll put this on my reading list. Thanks for the review.
Interesting, I hadn't heard that the author didn't want her book categorized as science fiction. Here's what Britannica has to say on the topic:
DeleteScience fiction, abbreviation SF or sci-fi, a form of fiction that deals principally with the impact of actual or imagined science upon society or individuals.
While that definition's broad enough to fly a space armada through, I do think "Station Eleven" qualifies since it imagines the impact of a global pandemic upon modern society.
Any recommended reads on the Maya civilization?
I don't recall reading any books specifically on the Mayans. Learned something about them through a history or anthropology seminar in grad school. I do recall, from that same seminar, an amazing book on a somewhat different subject, the fall of the Aztec empire in Mexico, successors to the Mayans. Written by Bernal Diaz, a Spanish soldier under Hernando Cortes, participant in and eyewitness to the events described. I just couldn't put it down, might have read all 500-plus pages either in one "sitting" or without stopping except to eat or sleep. I don't know which edition or translation it was, but here's one with reviews I agree with, if you scroll down through the first few: https://www.amazon.com/Memoirs-Conquistador-Castillo-Halcyon-Classics-ebook/dp/B003ODIZ1G/ref=pd_cp_351_1/133-1312549-2707336?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B003ODIZ1G&pd_rd_r=70b3e65f-3432-4eae-9077-f6a492ae41de&pd_rd_w=LjruN&pd_rd_wg=dmdGF&pf_rd_p=ef4dc990-a9ca-4945-ae0b-f8d549198ed6&pf_rd_r=1Z517FXNABZQZ7TGRCA2&psc=1&refRID=1Z517FXNABZQZ7TGRCA2
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