Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic story of love, loss and survival.
Emily St. John Mandel was born in Canada and studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. She is the author of the novels Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun, The Lola Quartet and Station Eleven and is a staff writer for The Millions. She lives in New York City.
Mandel's beautiful depiction of the survival of human culture and
art in a post-apocalyptic world, Perfect for fans of The
Handmaid's Tale. * Cosmopolitan *
The Handmaid's Tale isn't the only one out there to examine
life in a dystopia or collapsing society, or examine the challenges
women face when confronting an authoritative power. * The Verge
*
A dystopian novel that every woman should read after The
Handmaid's Tale. * Refinery29.com *
Glorious, unexpected, superbly written; just try putting it down. *
The Times *
One of the 2014 books that I did read stands above all the others,
however: Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel . . . It's
a deeply melancholy novel, but beautifully written, and wonderfully
elegiac, a book that I will long remember, and return to. -- George
R. R. Martin
Disturbing, inventive and exciting, Station Eleven left me
wistful for a world where I still live. -- Jessie Burton, author of
The Miniaturist
Once in a very long while a book becomes a brand new old friend, a
story you never knew you always wanted. Station Eleven is
that rare find that feels familiar and extraordinary at the same
time, expertly weaving together future and present and past, death
and life and Shakespeare. This is truly something special. -- Erin
Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus
Visually stunning, dreamily atmospheric and impressively gripping .
. . Station Eleven is not so much about apocalypse as about
memory and loss, nostalgia and yearning; the effort of art to
deepen our fleeting impressions of the world and bolster our
solitude. * Guardian *
Station Eleven is so compelling, so fearlessly imagined,
that I wouldn't have put it down for anything. I think this one is
really going to go places. -- Ann Patchett, author of Bel
Canto and State of Wonder
A beautiful and unsettling book, the action moves between the old
and new world, drawing connections between the characters and their
pasts and showing the sweetness of life as we know it now and the
value of friendship, love and art over all the vehicles, screens
and remote controls that have been rendered obsolete. Mandel's
skill in portraying her post-apocalyptic world makes her fictional
creation seem a terrifyingly real possibility. Apocalyptic stories
once offered the reader a scary view of an alternative reality and
the opportunity, on putting the book down, to look around
gratefully at the real world. This is a book to make its reader
mourn the life we still lead and the privileges we still enjoy. *
Sunday Express *
Station Eleven is a firework of a novel. Elegantly
constructed and packed with explosive beauty, it's full of life and
humanity and the aftershock of memory. -- Lauren Beukes, author of
The Shining Girls
There is no shortage of post-apocalyptic thrillers on the shelves
these days, but Station Eleven is unusually haunting . . .
There is an understated, piercing nostalgia . . . there is humour,
amid the collapse . . . and there is Mandel's marvellous creation,
the Travelling Symphony, travelling from one scattered gathering of
humanity to another . . . There is also a satisfyingly circular
mystery, as Mandel unveils neatly, satisfyingly, the links between
her disparate characters . . . This book will stay with its readers
much longer than more run-of-the-mill thrillers. -- Alison Flood,
Thriller of the Month * Observer *
Station Eleven is a magnificent, compulsive novel that
cleverly turns the notion of a "kinder, gentler time" on its head.
And, oh, the pleasure of falling down the rabbit hole of Mandel's
imagination - a dark, shimmering place rich in alarmingly real
detail and peopled with such human, such very appealing characters.
-- Liza Klaussmann, author of Tigers in Red Weather
A genuinely unsettling dystopian novel that also allows for moments
of great tenderness. Emily St. John Mandel conjures indelible
visuals, and her writing is pure elegance. -- Patrick deWitt,
author of The Sisters Brothers (shortlisted for the 2011 Man
Booker Prize)
An ambitious and addictive novel -- Sarah Hughes * Guardian *
Possibly the most captivating and thought-provoking
post-apocalyptic novel you will ever read . . . Mandel truly
creates a unique future - no battling for resources, but a
Travelling Symphony of musicians and actors who go from settlement
to settlement performing Shakespeare plays. Mandel's message is
that civilisation - and just as importantly, art - will endure as
long as there is life. She tells us that when humanity's back is
against the wall, decency will emerge. Mandel has a beautiful
writing style and the chapters preceding the apocalypse (the book
jumps around in time) show an assured handle on human emotions and
relationships, particularly those sequences involving Arthur
Leander . . . Though not without tension and a sense of horror,
Station Eleven rises above the bleakness of the usual
post-apocalyptic novels because its central concept is one so
rarely offered in the genre - hope. * Independent on Sunday *
Station Eleven reads as a love letter - acknowledging all
those things we would most miss and all those things we would still
have -- Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside
Ourselves
A haunting tale of art and the apocalypse. Station Eleven is
an unmissable experience. -- Samantha Shannon, author of The
Bone Season
Tremendous . . . if you are looking for a novel you can just wallow
in I'd pick Station Eleven up right now. -- Jane Garvey *
BBC Radio 4, Woman's Hour *
Station Eleven begins with a spectacular end. One night in a
Toronto theater, onstage performing the role of King Lear,
51-year-old Arthur Leander has a fatal heart attack. There is
barely time for people to absorb this shock when tragedy on a
considerably vaster scale arrives in the form of a flu pandemic so
lethal that, within weeks, most of the world's population has been
killed . . . Mandel is an exuberant storyteller . . . Readers will
be won over by her nimble interweaving of her characters' lives and
fates . . . Station Eleven is as much a mystery as it is a
post-apocalyptic tale . . . Mandel is especially good at planting
clues and raising the kind of plot-thickening questions that keep
the reader turning pages . . . Station Eleven offers comfort
and hope to those who believe, or want to believe, that doomsday
can be survived, that in spite of everything people will remain
good at heart, and when they start building a new world they will
want what was best about the old. -- Sigrid Nunez * New York Times
*
Station Eleven is the kind of book that speaks to dozens of
the readers in me - the Hollywood devotee, the comic book fan, the
cult junkie, the love lover, the disaster tourist. It is a
brilliant novel, and Emily St John Mandel is astonishing. -- Emma
Straub, author of The Vacationers and Laura Lamont's Life
in Pictures
Emily St John Mandel is currently gathering lots of world-ending
buzz with her new novel Station Eleven . . . conjures up an
eerie post-killer-flu future * Grazia *
Speculative fiction . . . of a decidedly literary bent * Metro
*
Riveting, brilliant -- Nina Stibbe, author of Love, Nina
A novel that miraculously reads like equal parts page-turner and
poem. One of her great feats is that the story feels spun rather
than plotted, with seamless shifts in time and characters . . .
This is not a story of crisis and survival. It's one of art and
family and memory and community and the awful courage it takes to
look upon the world with fresh and hopeful eyes. * Entertainment
Weekly *
Ambitious, magnificent . . . Mandel's vision is not only achingly
beautiful but startlingly plausible, exposing the fragile beauty of
the world we inhabit. In the burgeoning postapocalyptic literary
genre, Mandel's transcendent, haunting novel deserves a place
alongside The Road * Booklist *
This breathtaking highwire act argues theatre is primal - and
instinct to tell and act out stories, to come together to
experience art. Who wouldn't want to write novels about that? * Big
Issue *
An ambitious take on a post-apocalyptic world where some strive to
preserve art, culture and kindness . . . Think of Cormac McCarthy
seesawing with Joan Didion . . . Mandel spins a satisfying web of
coincidence and kismet . . . Magnetic . . . A breakout novel. *
Kirkus (starred review) *
Station Eleven is a mesmerising and beautiful book that puts a
unique spin on a familiar end-of-the-world scenario . . . Like The
Road, Mandel's novel makes you desperately glad for the world we
live in. -- Mark Edwards, author of The Magpies
Drew me in irresistibly -- Anne Tyler * New York Times *
A theater troupe in a post-epidemic dystopia. Art and celebrity at
the zenith of North American civilization and its nadir. Childhood
and marriage and violence and comic books. Station Eleven is about
all of these things, but none of them fully capture the magic of
the book, which is one of the best I've read in a while . . . It
reminded me quite a bit of Kate Atkinson's fantastic Life After
Life. And the plot, characters, writing-it's all fantastic, as
well. honestly, I don't know what else to say except . . . Buy,
buy, buy. Seriously. Go pre-order it now. * BookRiot *
Totally spellbinding . . . Deftly switching between the time before
and after the pandemic, the story reveals the fates of six
compelling characters, whose lives are interlinked. Full of eerie
suspense and surprises, this is a haunting, original novel that
makes you consider what's truly valuable in life. * Hello Magazine
*
A beautifully written and compelling debut from Emily St John
Mandel * Good Housekeeping Magazine *
Mandel's strong storytelling ability sets Station Eleven apart . .
. Mandel fluidly switches between characters and time periods . . .
the result is a provocative tale of societal apocalypse that
convincingly creates a disorientated reality, where humanity moves
into an uncertain future on a planet littered with reminders of an
imperfect past * The List *
Excellently written, Station Eleven is closer to Joyce than Orwell
as it stealthily connects plots and people * Sunday Times *
Plays with time and place in a manner that brings to mind Kate
Atkinson's superb Life After Life. * Stylist *
A deeply unsettling and well-crafted tale exploring human
relationships in extreme circumstances -- Philippa Williams * The
Lady *
The inventiveness and exploration of ideas about survival and art
give Mandel's novel its indelibility . . . Station Eleven amazed me
with its sharp and emotionally true reimagining of nearly
everything we take for granted in the world -- Meg Wolitzer
Strong storytelling and believable characters combine in this very
human tale * Bella *
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