‘Station Eleven’ for Annihilation

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Without a doubt, Station Eleven is not your archetypal YA dystopian novel, despite its post-apocalyptic plot involving a 99% annihilation of the world’s population. Canadian-born New York-based author Emily St. John Mandel’s fourth novel is a deeply mature, imaginative and mysterious tale that moves back and forth in time in a pandemic-stricken society on the verge of complete collapse. An Amazon Best Book of the Month for September, Station Eleven centers around the striking spread of a fatal virus that drastically alters our current world and transforms survivors into scavengers on the brink of existence.

In the opening pages, world-renowned actor Arthur Leander falls dead on stage while performing King Lear. By the end of that same week, the vast majority of the audience—indeed, the world—succumbs to the insidious Georgia flu. As the death rate grows, modern conveniences including technology, medicine and electricity are extinguished and survivors must struggle to come to grips amidst the surreal dystopian remains of their lost world. Twenty years after the massive outbreak, an unlikely acting troupe still wanders the Great Lakes region performing Shakespeare for those who remain. With chapters set before, during and after society’s collapse, Mandel manages to weave together past and present, shifting perspectives among a handful of nuanced and complex characters who paint both a tender and brutal portrait of a post-apocalyptic society that is eerily similar to our own.

St. John Mandel’s three previous novels—Last Night in Montreal, The Singer’s Gun and The Lola Quartet—were all Indie Next Picks. Her writing has also appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2013. She will discuss Station Eleven, at Boswell Book Co. on Monday, Sept. 22 and at Books & Company in Oconomowoc on Tuesday, Sept. 23. Both appearances are scheduled for 7 p.m.