Not for the faint-hearted especially during a pandemic!
Station Eleven is such an amazing read, I spend my days working in a theatre so the notion that in a post-apocalyptic world there would still be travelling theatrical groups made me very happy. Not to mention the idea that these theatrical troupes are kickass assassins when they need to be, give me hope should the zombie apocalypse ever come.
“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
What’s it about?
The main protagonist is Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony, a group that performs Shakespeare's works across what is left of the world. She has killer tattoos (literally) and is willing to do whatever it takes to protect her new world. We are introduced to the lives of other characters like Arthur Leander, a famous actor who has a heart attack on the stage, the same night the deadly virus spread across North America. The books narrative jumps between moments right before and after the virus had spread, too many years later where people are more adjusted and settled into the new world.
“No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.”
My Thoughts...
There are suspense, mystery and comic books and it's the first time I've read a post-apocalyptic book that made me feel like this could be a future we are destined for, especially with the way life is at the moment. It is beautifully written and worth your time, but I kid not when I say it is a tough read while the emotions of the pandemic are close to hand.
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