Finished this a couple of days ago...here's the review I posted at Goodreads...
“Survival is insufficient.”
This line from Station Eleven especially struck a chord with me. Emily St. John Mandel's beautifully written novel explores what would happen to our world in the event of a super-flu that wipes out 99% of the population. A familiar sounding theme in pop culture today that has been done and redone in books, tv and movies...sometimes done well and sometimes not. Station Eleven definitely falls in the former camp. Mandel's writing is absolutely amazing and within the first few pages you are in her world..probably because it is our world and the things she describes are so realistic.
But I think the overriding theme is as the quote above says. Is just survival sufficient? Or do we still need art and beauty and literature and all the things that we take so for granted in the present time.
This book is a gem. The characters are so fleshed out and the story flows between pre-flu and post-flu seamlessly.
4.5 stars.
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