Post-collapse reading: "Station Eleven" by Emily St John Mandel

This is the first of three catch-up reviews, the result of finishing three books in the space of three days. How come? 

It's down to a long, solo car trip, of the kind not undertaken for several years, and the rediscovered joys of audiobooks. You may consider that to be cheating, but I make no apology for Station Eleven, which was a full ten and a half hour unabridged listen. I even think a case can be made for getting more out of a book this way: you do actually experience every word - no skipping or skimming - and are generally in the hands of a professional who places emphases correctly, paces and pauses appropriately and helps brings different voices to life. It is, in short, a great and rewarding way to "read" a book, just so long as you have the time and focus to do it, such as, for example, on a long solo car trip.

But enough of the medium, what of the book itself? I sought out the book when I remembered that I wanted to read it, but had forgotten to include it in my selection of "real" books for the holidays. I had heard it spoken of highly here and there, most notably by David Plotz, he of the Slate Political Gabfest (and whom I once met), who raved about the book on a recent podcast. 

Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic story, set in a world twenty years after a flu pandemic has wiped out most of humanity - though in fact probably about half of its volume is spent in pre-collapse flashbacks. If your heart sinks when I reveal the basic premise of the book, I sympathise. I am not one for disaster movies and post-apocalyptic fiction - all that scarifying revelling in doom and disaster is not generally for me. That said, there has been an exception, The Road, which I wrote about in 2011, a book so superbly written that its utter bleakness became a virtue. 


The Road is worth mentioning, because it presents a huge contrast with Station Eleven. Whereas Cormac McCarthy's vision was unremittingly awful, Mantel (whose apocalypse, let it be said, does not destroy nature, just most of mankind) does see some kind of future, while at the same time finding much to say about the past. No, in case you were wondering, this is not some sort of eco-visionary thing, it is very much about humanity.

At the centre of the story is a fading Hollywood star, Arthur Leander, who - no spoiler here - never even sees the collapse because he dies, of non-flu causes, while on stage playing King Lear, on the very day the pandemic arrives in Toronto where he is currently based. Leander turns out, in many complicated ways, both literal and figurative, to be the point of intersection of many different lives, and to pass on a critically important, though insubstantial and intangible legacy to the new post collapse world. In this sense, Station Eleven, is about people and the connections between them and how their interactions, both fleeting and intimate, can have consequences so fundamental as to span the collapse of civilisation itself.

Emily St John Mandel 

There is a lot in Mandel's book about civilisation, a pining admiration for its basics, electric light, fridges, TV, as well as for its higher achievements, space travel, flight, the internet, but also a recognition of its fragility, how quickly it can all fall apart without the people needed just to keep it functioning in it utter interconnectedness. The post-collapse world is suddenly  a very much smaller one, small communities living largely in ignorance even of what is happening in the next settlement, let alone in the wider world. Yes, there was chaos. Mandel's characters often evoke the dangerous early post-collapse years, years of anarchy and violence, grim years to be survived, but also years which are largely now a thing of the past, as communities have formed and a basic human need for order restored. Mandel also pins her colours firmly to the mast, centering her tale on an itinerant group of performers and musicians who tour their "territory" in the Great Lakes region of what was once the USA, performing classical music and Shakespeare plays, because, according to a motto borrowed from Star Trek, "survival is insufficient".

As the novel unfolds, we follow the performing troupe at the same time as we rewind in protected flashbacks to pre-collapse days to reveal how many of the people and things we know in this new world arrived there from the past. Significances deepen and connections are made. There is drama and plot too, things are not straightforward for the band of actors and musicians, especially after an encounter with a sect leader known only as the Prophet. 

As post-apocalyptic novels go - and I confess I am not a great connoisseur of the genre - this is certainly at the gentler, more thoughtful and satisfying end of the scale. It uses its premise both to tell a story and to reflect on the human condition, with and without the context of modern civilisation. 

So I agree with Plotz, it's a recommendation.