In all creation; first there is destruction

You guys called it. This book is scare-mazeballs. I read this book in one day, or rather, I used up all of my night to finish it and then I couldn’t sleep. There are no monsters in this book, no zombies, only the core of humanity stripped and laid bare. I got up a lot to check the locks on my door.

So here’s the obligatory summary (Spoilers, sweety). I’ll make it as short as possible; We open the novel on the night of the last day of the world as we know it. On this day Arthur Leander dies of a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. A young girl watches him die. Years later she is part of the Traveling Symphony, walking the wasteland of America in the aftermath of what is simply known as the Georgia Flu.

Station Eleven is named after a comic drawn by Arthur Leander’s ex-wife, Miranda who gave it to him shortly before he died. He, in turn, gave it to Kirsten, the young girl who watched him die (and that’s not even half of all the characters in this book!). Kirsten carries the comic with her in the new world – Arthur Leander becomes her obsession, her link to her past life.

In short, this books is a post-apocalyptic tale, not of survival, but of rebuilding, as the motto of the Traveling symphony reads:

“Because survival is insufficient”.

So while they walk the roads and put on plays, we see that it is possible to rebuild the world. We see art as the integral part of humanity that it is. We witness communities spanning the country and friendships form and people fall in love, and then out of love. All the pretty little things of life.

And we also see some ugly things; of course there is your run-of-the-mill evil cult that sort of drives the plot forward, but some of the most enjoyable scenes are the small moments; in the airport as they create a family and a community; Kirsten exploring abandoned houses, finding scraps and pieces for their shows along the way; being trapped in a rain storm with no way of contacting people who’ve abandoned you.

This book is celebration of the world today, but also a sober critique. There are many characters in this novel, each with their own story. As the tales weave the past and the present together we come to understand who the people once were, and what they had to let go of, to create themselves in this new world. And, as the novel progresses, we understand these characters are still letting go, electricity may be down, water and food scarce, life as they knew it gone, but some other life prevails. From the destruction they are driven to create. And this life, too, includes its own goodbyes, its own ways of letting go. Because survival is insufficient and when one thing is destroyed new things may emerge to take its place.

Crossposted on my blog ladyscribble.com