Title: Station Eleven
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Type: Fiction
Page Count: 340
Rating: 4.25/5
I’d heard a lot of good things about this book going into it, and then it was picked out for me by a friend who I asked to pick out a random number to coincide with a book on my wish list. This is what she picked out for me.
It’s also a beautiful little book as well, and so my expectations were pretty high going into it. I’m happy to say that it didn’t disappoint me, too. It’s beautifully written and does a great job of examining a bunch of different themes and subject matters and asking the reader some questions.
But for me, though, what I was most impressed with was the depiction of a world in which a super flu has taken out most of the population. It was extremely well done, and it was also pretty unsettling considering what’s going on in the world at the moment. I mean, there was even a scene in which one of the characters started panic buying and ended up stocking up a trolley entirely with toilet paper.
So I mean, I’m not sure if it’s the best book for you to read if you’re looking for a little bit of a distraction from what’s going on in the world around us, but if you just want something that’s genuinely well-written and a pleasure to read, you’re going to struggle to find something better than this. Having now finished it, I can say that it lives up to all of the hype.
Would I recommend this one? Hell yeah I would, even during these troubled times when you might not really feel like engaging with this sort of subject matter. It’s not far off being a masterpiece and definitely a top contender for my top books of the quarter, even though it’s only just begun. It’s just a little bit scary how realistic it all was, you know? Bit nuts.
