Station Eleven

De: Emily St. John Mandel

Narrado por: Jack Hawkins

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2015

Day one: The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the Earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%.

Week Two: Civilization has crumbled.

Year Twenty: A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and it threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild.

Moving backwards and forwards in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: famous actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan, a bystander warned about the flu just in time; Arthur's first wife, Miranda; Arthur's oldest friend, Clark; Kirsten, an actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed 'prophet'.

Emily St. John Mandel was born in Canada and studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. She is the author of the novels Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, The Lola Quartet, and Station Eleven and is a staff writer for The Millions. She is married and lives in New York.

©2014 Emily St. John Mandel (P)2014 Audible Studios

Couldn’t stop listening…!

This was a fantastic listen! A wonderful idea, a fantastic cast of characters, absorbing, completely gripping and yet also moving and powerful. Highly recommended!

Masterful

One of the most brilliant dystopian books out there, especially taking into account COVID19 and what could have been. Masterfully composed and narrated. Well worth a listen!

Loved it

If you could sum up Station Eleven in three words, what would they be?

Compelling and thought provoking

Any additional comments?

I really enjoyed it and will probably listen again at some stage.

Twists and turns and oh the humanity

Wonderful story about the end of the world and the beginning of the world and the continuing of humanity. Beautifully written, beautifully read. There was something strange about choosing an English voice actor to do a story (with accents!) set in North America … but then, there’s something strange about the story anyway, and Jack aces the emotion…

Nothing particularly wrong with it

This novel brought up some interesting ideas and thoughts. I just have to say that sadly I didn't connect with the characters really at all. I liked it for the story and critique of capitalism, but it could have been great if the characters had been compelling. It wasn't just that the movie star guy was unlikable, I just got so bored hearing about him, I didn't care at all.

Masterpiece

A most thoughtful and yet gripping account of civilisation collapse. Told from several intertwined perspectives. This will stay with me.

Dullest apocalypse ever

Nothing new here from post outbreak reimaginings of recent films. I'm disappointed with this esp as it made top ten lists of 2014.

Unbelievable premise

**Spoilers
I just couldn't suspend my belief in reality to such a ridiculous level.
So a flu came and wiped out most of humanity and somehow all their knowledge? They don't know how to harness electricity anymore, clean water is non-existent, we don't know how combustion engines work anymore, etc. etc. So I'm meant to believe that all libraries and human knowledge was consumed by this flu virus?

Oh, except of course for the works of Shakespeare. Somehow his work survived? But all other knowledge was lost? Give me a break.

The reader is great though. I tried to like it, for his sake, but I can't sit through this drivel.