It’s been days since I finished this, and I still don’t know what I think about it. I don’t even know if I liked it or if I hated it or if it was a good ending or a bad ending, or if it was even an ending. Like, yes, OBVIOUSLY it was an ending literally because the series is over, but good endings FEEL like endings, you know? Does that answer my question as to whether this is good or not? I have no […]
There’s No Place Like Home
This 2014 National Book Award Finalist is a beautiful affirmation of hope in the face of devastating loss and upheaval. Station Eleven is often characterized as an apocalyptic novel, but I believe this term is too limiting and does a disservice to the author. While the destruction of civilization is at the core of the plot, Mandel is more concerned with the creation of a new world than the destruction of the old one. This is a novel about resilience, about knowing what to hold […]
“Like a movie reel run in reverse”
Wow. I’ve been sitting here considering just copy-pasting “wow” two hundred and forty-nine times. I’d give this book six stars if I could. I think North Korea holds a fascination for many of us in the west. Certainly it does for me. I was eight when the Berlin Wall fell; old enough to know that something was happening, but too young to really grasp the significance. North Korea is the only closed country I’ve ever been aware of. Cuba is near enough and porous enough […]