Station Eleven is a book that might be too ambitious for its own good. It has a lot to say, and author Emily St. John Mandel succeeds in conveying these messages, though at some points the story takes a hit because of it. Like most post-apocalyptic stories, Mandel chooses to deify everyday life. The story is billed as following a theater troupe who perform Shakespeare in a post-apocalyptic but not completely destroyed world, though we spend roughly half the time with various characters before the world ends, and Mandel lovingly describes the goings on of normal life.
The book opens with a former famous, now semi-washed up, actor, Arthur Leander, having a heart attack on stage while performing King Lear, and dying. This also happens to be the night a new virus reaches Toronto from another country, and begins spreading faster than the country can handle (sound familiar?). The book revolves around this actor, as we visit his ex-wives, best friend, and even paparazzi who followed him throughout the book. We get glimpses of their lives before and after the world ‘ends’, and how they’ve adapted.
The two prongs of the story are a before and after. The theater troupe is trying to find a couple who were part of the troupe, but were left in a town they had visited years ago in order to safely have a child and raise it. When the traveling performers return, they’re told the new family has left, going to a museum.
Along the way, they run into a man known as “The Prophet” who just so happens to be the son of Arthur’s ex-wife. The Prophet leads a group of marauders who kidnap people to join their cult. Unfortunately, even though The Prophet is built up as the main protagonist of the novel, his appearances are few and far between, and when he does appear, he’s lackluster. The story ends up being more a short story collection of how people dealt with the end of the known world. To me, these stories range from bad (one of Arthur’s ex-wives dies alone in a foreign country) to fine (one of the characters holes up in his apartment for weeks, but then must make the decision to venture out into the world). The best of these stories, in my opinion, deals with Arthur’s best friend, one of his ex-wives, and Arthur’s son who eventually becomes The Prophet.
The night of Arthur’s death, his immediate family, friends, and lawyers are notified. Clark, Arthur’s friend, is notified, and decides to tell Elizabeth, Arthur’s ex-wife. They all board a plane bound for Toronto, but get diverted to a small airport in fictional Severn City. The story follows how the various travellers come together, survive, leave, and thrive. It’s also a love story between Clark and the modern era. He starts a ‘Museum of Civilization’, where people can see relics of the past, and learn about what things were like. This section of the book, I think, stands well above the rest. It perfectly distills what Mandel wants to say about society, culture, and humanity. Because that’s what this book is, a reflection on, and love letter to, humans. What we’ve achieved is something that one might not normally notice until it’s gone.
This is perfectly encapsulated in the theater troupe. Art, culture, and theater are things that are not necessary for survival. They don’t feed us, give us shelter. These things are the most uniquely human though. So to have a group continuing this human tradition is very much in line with the themes Mandel is presenting. Which brings me to King Lear.
Honestly, I wish I had more than one-thousand words to write about the intertextuality, and similarities, of Station Eleven and King Lear. Arthur Leander, who played the titular Lear in the play in which he died, is obviously the Lear stand-in for this book. He is the male power holder, who gives power to others. Effectively, he gives his ‘land’ (starpower) to his ‘daughters’ (wives). He also starts to lose his star power, and, by the time he is playing Lear, one might call him in the ‘madman’ portion of his life. He has three wives, much like Lear has three daughters. His Cordelia is Miranda, who dies in another country (offstage). His Goneril and Reagen are his other two wives. Of course, all of the backstabbing between those three that goes on in the play is, in this book, extramarital affairs. They all meet their predestined tragic ends as well. Clark is Arthur’s fool, providing comic relief and important insight.
Mandel uses Lear in her themes, as well. One of the major scenes in Lear is when the King is lost in the storm, insignificant. Nature is powerful. Mandel echoes that statement, often making notes to say how nature has taken over various man made objects like homes, buildings, and cars. Towards the end of the novel, however, Mandel puts a twist on this theme of insignificance in nature. Clark brings one of the members of the theater troupe into the air traffic control tower of the airport he lives at. From that high vantage point, he points out how humanity is rebounding, as a community has developed electricity again. Humanity is putting its roots down again.
Overall, Mandel does a lot of different things with this novel. She writes from different viewpoints, tells different characters’ stories through the lense of the same world-changing event, and tells of their lives before that. She also weaves together themes from King Lear, a love letter to modern day humanity, and a traditional post-apocalyptic plot into one book, and makes it all work. This work deserves the awards it gets. My only issues are it’s reliance on coincidence, which happens too much for my liking, and some flat characters. I would’ve also liked more focus on the travelling theater troupe, since we only spend about forty percent of the book with them. The good far outweighs the bad here.
