Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel has been on my reading list forever. I've checked it out from the library two or three times before and just never really got past the first three or four pages.  But I've read raves about this book, so I wanted to figure it out.

I have mixed feelings on this book. I really liked the framing device. We start at a performance of King Lear at a Toronto theater as Arthur Leander, a famous actor, dies of a heart attack during the so-called "mad scene." From there, we watch as the Georgia Flu rips through the world, wiping out most of humanity.  We follow characters from the theater as they live or die in this new world, a world without law, electricity and technology, or decent medical care.   I can imagine starting at any grouping of a dozen or more people and following their stories. It is a helpful organizational scheme to keep us in place in a complicated book full of time and geographical switches and prevents us from going off in too many directions, following too many people.

But I actually wish the book were longer. I can't believe I'm writing this. I'm the person who usually wants to tighten up books by cutting out a quarter of the pages in the editing process. But we just don't stay with characters long enough to really get to know them. I would have liked more chapters on so many of the characters, chapters where we could have delved into the characters' backgrounds more thoroughly. For instance, there was a child actress in the Lear production and we find her, twenty years later, a total survivor who is able to defend herself and live a quality life. It's fun to spend time with her, but don't think I didn't think it was lazy that there's just a year and a half of her life that she doesn't remember and her brother is dead so he can't tell her. We don't know how she went from a sprite in the theater production to this savage, in-charge woman. I thought it was a writing shortcut that put distance between me, as a reader, and this character.

The writing was well-done and I enjoyed every page. Maybe that's the real reason I wanted the book to be longer. I wanted to stay in this world longer. It's a post-apocalyptic world, but it's a less dire post-apocalyptic world than many. There seems to be hope and a future of a world in which humanity can rebound. And maybe I need that hope right now.