It's been far too long since I put up a post here. I've read many books in the interval, but none were quite good enough to merit note. But early this semester, a student recommended Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, and it is wonderful.
A pandemic has wiped put just about all the humans, and those who struggle on have to find ways to endure in the remains of civilization. No electricity, no gasoline, but plenty of decaying roadside motels to sleep in. We trace several threads that pull tighter as the novel proceeds: an aging actor who collapses on stage; a child actor handed a comic book and a beautiful paperweight; a business consultant on a flight diverted from its final destination. They all, one way or another, live by the motto written on the side of the wagon of traveling Symphony: Survival is insufficient. Each individual, each group, is pressing to do more than live.
In these troubled days, post-apocalyptic literature has a new appeal -- maybe, the book seems to suggest, after great horror, things might unexpectedly turn out to be, in strange ways, somewhat better.
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