Station Eleven

[sawyl]

Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven got amazing reviews when it came out last year and I'm embarrassed it has taken me a year to get round to reading it. Because it really is as good as everyone says: glacially beautiful writing; moments of painfully insightful nostalgia; sharp comments on the banalities of the corporate world; a beguiling cast of characters; and, ultimately, a feeling of hope for the future.

Arthur Leander's death on stage during a production of King Lear at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto marks the beginning of the end. Jeevan Choudhary, the paramedic who jumps up on stage to perform CPR, first fails to save his patient and then, on his way home, learns from a friend at Toronto General, that the entire world seems to be dying of Georgian Flu.

Twenty years later Kirsten Raymonde, a child actor in Arthur's last performance, is a member of the Travelling Symphony, a group of actors and musicians who travel the post-apocalyptic midwest putting on Shakespeare plays. Despite having forgotten most of her early life, Kirsten retains a strong memory of Arthur's kindness towards her and has developed an obsession with Dr Eleven, a pair of sci-fi comics that were a gift from Arthur.

The story of the Travelling Symphony, which includes an encounter with a strange prophet at a previously friendly town, is intercut with accounts of Arthur's life and that of his first wife, Miranda Carroll, who spent all her spare time working on Dr Eleven. Their lives are entwined with Jeevan's, first when he takes photos of them during their marriage, then later when he interviews Arthur for a magazine article. Also woven in to the structure is Clark Thompson, Arthur's best friend, who finds himself burdened with breaking the news of Arthur's death to his son and his various ex-wives, and who has his own travails when the flu strikes.

Station Eleven has a contemplative quality, with some wonderful writing that perfectly captures the points of inflection where the characters realise that they are enjoying things they took for granted for the very last time: Jeevan mourns the passing of the cappuccino; Clark marvels at the sheer ease with which he can, with a couple of buttons, reach halfway round the world to speak to Miranda or step aboard plane and travel hundreds of miles without a thought, only to lose these almost-magical abilities within a matter of days; August, Kirsten's best friend, lives for old copies of TV guides and muddled memories of Star Trek; while Kirsten misses proper dentistry and looks forward to a time when people won't have to kill each other to survive the anarchic wilds of post-plague America.

A truly beautiful book that ought to be on everyone's reading list...