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.
