Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

One of my top reads of 2020

Teetering before and after a major plague sweeps the world, Station Eleven dives into the lives of several characters and their contributions and impact on a world that is beginning to forget how life was before the sickness spread.

The characters are fascinating and the world is fleshed out, making it easy for the reader to imagine. With many dystopian books, and other media formats, it's easy to paint a negative picture of humanity. While this book does that to an extent, it is formed in a way that gives you hope more so. There is always a theme with these stories, power. The difference is that we rarely get a glimpse of what leads to the need for it and Mandel effectively explains through actions.

Maybe it is my fascination with the Hollywood system and actors that kept my interest up and how art affects us as people in different ways and how it is important to continue it even after most of the world fades away. In a way, I found it to be an allegory to the lack of funding that the arts in the U.S. are facing, including our schools.

If there was a takeaway that someone should have with Station Eleven is that the things we do in life are just as important to the future as it is to the present, and the lengths that one will take to understand the world they live in, how are minds justify our actions, and how we learn to be better as life goes on, for better or for worse.