Bookish Thoughts

This is my second time through Station Eleven.  The first time I read it, I inhaled the entire book in a day. This time I made an effort to stretch it out (by juggling a few other books at the same time) so I could absorb it a little more slowly. This is the sort of book that rewards deeper thought, and it definitely gave me a lot to think about. Station Eleven  is very concerned with home and with interrogating the idea that you can't go home again. It opens with a flu that kills over 99% of the world's population in a few days, leaving the remaining few to find a way to live in a vastly changed world. Small settlements pop up here and there, but the post-apocalypse story focuses on a traveling theater troupe. In a very real sense, these people can't go home again. There's no home to go to, and the main characters have chosen to make their home on the road. Even the pre-apocalypse characters, Arthur and Miranda, have left behind their hometown in favor of making a ...

When I try to describe  Station Eleven , the word tapestry comes to mind. Or maybe jigsaw puzzle. This book is about an apocalyptic event that destroys civilization as we know it and the years following. It's about finding hope again, and love and inspiration, in the wake of a catastrophe. Station Eleven  deals with the fallout of a strain of flu that is highly contagious, highly lethal, and very quick moving. Most people are dead within a day of showing first symptoms, and anyone who comes in contact with them is dead a day later. Only those who mange to avoid exposure are spared, but they're faced with a world that has ground to a halt. Survival is the first order of business. But the Travelling Symphony, who wander between settlements performing music and plays, have decided that Seven of Nine was right: Survival is insufficient. The book bounces back and forth, between timelines and characters, creating a picture of what happened during the outbreak and in the decades ...