This is not a new book by Emily St. John Mandel (“The Singers Gun,” “The Last Night In Montreal,” “The Lola Quartet”). It was written in 2014, long before Covid-19, but not as long as apocalyptic dystopian stories have been around. Think about Noah's story, and the end of the world as he knew it. And all the dead unbelievers after the end of civilization. So many lives taken away in so short a time. It is unconscionable.
While the concept isn't new, this author has a new, modern story written in a new and interesting way. It is a brilliant telling of a now all too believable scenario in our modern age of air flight and a pandemic disease from which there is no hiding .
“Station Eleven” (Thorndike Press, ISBN 978-4104-7417-9, ISBN 1-4104-7417-8) is such a tale.
A swine flu mutation originating in Georgia, Russia spreads so easily and quickly that there is no time to avoid it. It spreads everywhere, killing anybody who comes close to it. The disease kills 99 percent of the human race and leaves the survivors in a place without any modern civilization to guide them; no police, no phones, no computers, no food after the stores have been robbed of anything edible. Nobody that was in the world they used to know, much like Noah's old tale of woe.
The story is told by actors; a world famous movie star who dies on stage as a used up elderly man, and the actors who knew him with those who are too young to remember him, and a nomadic group of actors and musicians who travel together around the Great Lakes region, called “The Traveling Symphony”, who performs Shakespeare whereever they go. But most importantly it is about “Miranda,” the movie star's first failed marriage. She is an artist that finds her importance in the world by drawing her illustrated comic books, and in her son by the dead actor.
She is the one who writes “Station Eleven” in a small number of illustrated printings.
Station Eleven is about a planet-sized spaceship that falls through a wormhole and is now far from Earth, lost in space. It is about the adventures of “Doctor Eleven” on the planet spaceship where the “Undersea” Seahorses, who constantly threaten the remaining human beings left on the spaceship. These comic books show up through the plot, both before and after the disaster of the plague. They show us the pathway of the plot, and provide guidance that illuminates the multiple times in which the story is told.
The ways “The Traveling Symphony” follows are dangerous at all times, searching for food, such as deer or leftover canned food. Some are killed by the Prophet’s followers, a group who follows his teachings taken from the old Bible, along with his own terrible misquoted prayers and rants and songs. His followers kill anybody who doesn't take on his manic madness. He travels along the path the actors are on, sometimes with disastrous results. The Prophet is the part of the background story that is constantly filled with the destruction of the old ways.
Meanwhile, the Sympathy is heading toward what is known to be called the “Museum of Civilization” which is in an airport along with the passengers who became stranded there when the flights stopped. There is no other purpose for the airport now. The museum is filled with relics of a different time lost long ago. There are Walkmans, and cell phones, video machines, and other useless items, all collected by one man who is a central character throughout all the time shifts in the book.
The Traveling Symphony winds up at the Severn City Airport and finds a very simple society in which the small group of survivors keep themselves in order to continue living together in some kind of peace. The Symphony performs Shakespeare as usual. Some players like the structure in the airport, but travel on, going back into danger.
There is no way to describe this book that’s very much a possible warning for the future. Again, remember Covid-19 and its mutations ravaging the world without us knowing it existed and was out of anybody's control. It could happen.
This story is not the bummer I may have inferred to you. There is joy in the characters rising above a seemingly impossible disaster regardless of odds, and the happiness of relationships despite an unknowable future. There is understated humor to be enjoyed in this tome that is mixed in with the horror it portrays at times.
This is a good, captivating and very well written book by a seasoned author. I recommend this tale to any dedicated reader. It is worth the trouble to travel back to its 2014 publication.
However, for those who want more out of the story and have cable television, HBO has made something truly wonderful out of it: a ten episode series that fills in the book's story and all the characters expanded into a fantastic tale that takes nothing away from the book. It is truly a marvel to behold and to be thoroughly enjoyed.
I sincerely hope you get to enjoy both of them.
