Dive Into CBR Book Club

Ok fellow Cannonballers, it’s time to dive into CBR Book Club!

After several awesome reviews of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, we’re going to have a spoiler-heavy discussion of the book, and Mswas has asked me, faintingviolet, to moderate. We will be starting on Monday March 9^th, to give those of you who have added it to your TBR one month to get it read before the discussion.

One of the struggles I had with reviewing this book was not wanting to discuss the themes and narrative devices for fear of ruining the experience for others, so if you haven’t read the book and want to go in completely clean, here’s the point where you exit, because SPOILERS possibly ahead.

Here are some of the themes/questions that we can discuss starting March 9^th, and if you have more topics you want other Cannonballers to ruminate on in the meantime, please leave them in the comments. We will have a new post on March 9^th to discuss all of the various things which affected us.

Happy reading, see you on March 9^th!

Topics for Discussion:

• Did you find the shifts between pre and post-apocalypse to be an effective storytelling technique? How about changing character perspectives?
• Why do you think Station Elevenhas been so successful when there are many other novels in a similar vein out there right now?
• Does the novel have a main character? Who would you consider it to be?
• How do Shakespearean motifs coincide with those of Station Eleven, both the novel and the comic?
• What is the metaphor of the Station Eleven comic books? How does the Undersea connect to the events of the novel?
• Certain items turn up again and again, for instance the comic books and the paperweight—things Arthur gave away before he died, what point is Mandel making?
• Different characters we meet have different opinions about teaching children about the pre-collapse world. What are the benefits of remembering, and of not remembering?
• Because we don’t know what happened to Kirsten in her first year on the road, did it affect your experience of reading the book?
• The novel ends with Clark, remembering the dinner party and imagining that somewhere in the world, ships are sailing. Why did Mandel choose to end the novel with him?

Note: Canadian Cannonballers can enter a raffle for one of three copies of Station Eleven. Visit Rafflecopter to get in on this March 11 drawing, sponsored by HarperCollins Canada.