Emily St. John Mandel is a contemporary Canadian author living in the United States. In "Station Eleven", her fourth and latest novel (published in 2014), she starts, with calm and paced language, by describing an unusual night at the theater. The instant impression is that of watching a thrilling, well-crafted TV series: the way the setting and the characters are introduced, the way the writing focuses on one character then another one in a large cast, induces a perception of movement, action and familiarity.
In this novel a woman in her 20s, an actress in the "Traveling Symphony", journeys from one settlement to the next in a post-pandemic America, 20 years …show more content…
"Is it something supernatural?" we wonder, who knows what is going on in this new world?
In a nutshell the book offers also adventures, fights, love plots. These are somewhere in the background, somehow necessary in a world supposed to be violent, somehow serving a purpose, rendering them not completely satisfactory.
These are young people's adventures combined with a lady's (Miranda in "Doctor Eleven") view of the world and this mix floats but does not go deeper. At the heart of the novel there is a perceivable philosophy, but no great mysteries and behind a world - a breathing, pulsating world - there should be an ocean of connections and truths.
The writing is memorable in its details - lost thoughts, lost remarks, haphazard inquiries in someones lost life and pain. I almost wish "Station Eleven" would be just that: random lost profound connections with no attempt of visibility. I read somewhere that this book would make a great movie, perhaps it would make a successful TV series, but I shouldn't have felt that this goal