I am late to the posting game but finished Station Eleven soon after Spring Break. I chose this book because it was a Cannonball Read book and already had it in my Kindle. I honestly only remembered it took place in a sort of post apocalyptic world when I began reading it. Of course I started reading the novel in the middle of the pandemic and realized it started with a flu which made me question my choice to have it be my first social distancing book. Despite this the interweaving plots had me hooked and in between keeping my children occupied I read it.
The story follows a number of a characters before, during, and after a global pandemic wipes out a large portion of the population and drastically changes life on this planet for humans. One character the others revolve around is a famous Hollywood actor who has various connections with other characters in the story. The book is most compelling to me when it provides a picture of how life has evolved after the pandemic.
Station Eleven has so many pieces that make it engaging. I personally enjoy it when you get to view a story from different character’s points of view and this novel provides this. The plot does jump around between time periods and characters which makes the story engaging because I wanted to know how all the plots and characters were going to intersect. Towards the end I started to have some more clear predictions on how all the elements would converge and this helped me to zip through the end of the book.
This is a unique book in some ways. As I read it parts of it seemed like my husband, who is just an occasional reader, would enjoy it. But the parts focusing on characters lives before the pandemic, some of whom don’t live through the pandemic, seem like they may put him off. The parts after the pandemic read like an action or sci-fi book while the parts before read like a contemporary novel about the people surrounding an aging Hollywood actor. I personally enjoyed how the stories intertwined but some might find those parts less engaging. I would still recommend giving the book a shot and attempting at least the first section if any of this review appealed to you, however some people might want to wait until COVID-19 is more of a memory.