Paperback, 352 pages
English language
Published April 10, 2017 by Harper Perennial.
The international publishing sensation now available in paperback: an audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame and ambition, set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse
One snowy night, a famous Hollywood actor dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theatre troupe known as the Travelling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend and a young actress with the Travelling Symphony caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the …
The international publishing sensation now available in paperback: an audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame and ambition, set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse
One snowy night, a famous Hollywood actor dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theatre troupe known as the Travelling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend and a young actress with the Travelling Symphony caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, 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.
A book I have kept thinking of years after reading it. Great prose, plot, characters, universe - it has it all.
My favorite scenes are of Jeevan and Frank in Toronto as the pandemic is unfolding.
This was recommended to me and I went in knowing very little about it.
I found it to be a really gripping novel; hard to put down. I was really excited to see how the characters lives intersected and how they handled the trauma of the devastating pandemic.
The book tells the story of the characters at various stages of their lives ranging from many years before the pandemic, to around 20 years after. This gives a really interesting perspective on the characters, and keeps the pace of the book fast and interesting.
Highly recommended!
I've been avoiding post-apocalyptic stories lately, but this one kept my attention all the way through. It had two main pluses for me:
1) No zombies, just 99% of the world's population dying from a really bad flu.
2) Much of it was set in Toronto and southern Ontario.
