Our Novel Escape discussion

Read and discuss Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel here!!

An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.

Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten's arm is a line from Star Trek: "Because survival is insufficient." But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.

Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

I am still on hold for this one.

Elizabeth wrote: "I am still on hold for this one."

I'll probably end up having to buy this one, since I would be number 50 on the waiting list at the library.

I am about 80 pages into Station Eleven. So far I am really enjoying this book, a lot more than most of the books I have read in the last few months. It is smart and the characters are interesting and well developed. I usually don't like flash backs and half of this book takes place in the past but the story is so interesting that I don't even care.

Cathy wrote: "I am about 80 pages into Station Eleven. So far I am really enjoying this book, a lot more than most of the books I have read in the last few months. It is smart and the characters ..."

I'm so glad you're liking it. I don't normally like to read sci-fi/apocalyptic books, but this one is extremely interesting!!

This paragraph stopped me cold. How many of us could this be said about? p 163

"I'm talking about these people who've ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. Do you know what I mean? They've done what's expected of them. They want to do something different but it's impossible now, there's a mortgage, kids, whatever, they're trapped."

I am loving this book so far even though it is different from anything I have ever read before.

I'm about half way through. Didn't think I'd like it at first but I'm glad I persisted. It is definitely different. It is difficult for an author to slide back and forth in time but this one is well written. Can't wait to see how it ends.

I really enjoyed this book, I have read a lot of end of the world novels but this one was unique because instead of focusing on how people survived it spent more time on their thoughts and feelings. How they coped with their survival.