Station Eleven by Emily St. John MandelMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked up this book by accident, forgetting what it was about. I had gone book shopping to cure some sadness I was feeling that day, and I left with five books. I’ve now finally finished them all.
Station Eleven was the last one I came to purely because of the cover. Quite frankly, this one is ugly. I appreciate that all of Mandel’s books now match in the UK, but I’ve never been a massive fan of orange. But, we all know, we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and I had heard from people I trusted that it was good, so I eventually started to read it.
My housemate at the time had read the book a while ago, maybe for school, I can’t remember, so I rushed into her room when I got to the moment.
“This book is about a pandemic!” I said. She looked at me like I was an idiot. I knew the book was about actors performing Shakespeare after an apocalyptic event, but I didn’t know what the event was (thanks to my habit of not reading blurbs, first triggered when I was in my books-about-horses phase as a child, and I was halfway through a first chapter and then I read the blurb and found out that the horse in this book died). Looking back, it should have been frightfully obvious. Of course these performers would latch onto Shakespeare; if he could create art in a time of death and disease, so could they.
After that moment, I must admit, this book was slow going. In my own words, “it’s a proper book.” Despite being a graduate of English Literature, I’m not the biggest fan of “proper books” (translation, literary fiction). I like cheesy YA, fantasy whether urban or high, magical realism, and, above all else, queer storylines. I’m sure it’s just my inability to be engaged in something intellectual, but my god I found all the set up quite boring. I didn’t care about Arthur Leander, or his many wives, I barely cared about the Travelling Symphony. Soon, with other books coming out, and life getting in the way, I put down Station Eleven and didn’t pick it back up for nearly a month.
The second half was much stronger, although maybe, now my life has stopped (degree done, applying for jobs day in day out hoping that something will stick), I was more willing to give myself over to the world struck with a much worse pandemic. There was a line that made me chuckle, not because it was funny, but because a character was considering alternate universes where the Georgia Flu wasn’t that bad.
I wish I could say Station Eleven compelled me until the end, but it didn’t. The plot meandered back after a more captivating middle section, but then I was left with characters I didn’t care about all too much.
Oh well.
3 out 5 stars.
View all my reviews
Comments
Post a Comment