Station Eleven

 

By Emily St. John Mandel

A deadly flu wipes out most of humanity. Only a small percentage survives. They struggle to survive and come together in small communities and bands. One of those bands is the Traveling Symphony which performs plays and concerts. They come to a community that they visited in the past, hoping to find two members who were staying there for a couple of years. But the place has changed and their friends are not there. It has been taken over by a cult, and their prophet is one of those gross dudes who has visions that instruct him to "marry" every female he lusts for his wives. Although the symphony was planning to stay awhile, this new cult gives them the creeps and they pack up and leave. But the prophets next intended bride, an adolescent girl, hides in one of the caravan wagons, giving the prophet the excuse he needs to chase after them.

Tying the story together is the tale of Arthur Leander, a famous actor who dies on stage of a heart attack during a play on the very night the plague came to America. One of the actors in the play is a little girl, Kirsten, who escapes the plague and, twenty years later, is one of the members of the Traveling Symphony. Art's life and that of his three wives winds through the story, with a graphic novel, Station Eleven, drawn and written by his first wife, Miranda, also bringing the characters' stories together. 

This was a pretty good read. I really found her style of writing to easy and enjoyable to read. She doesn't bog you down in complicated descriptions of scientific gobbledygook or boring descriptions of battles and wars. She also skips horrifying descriptions of the aftermath of the deadly epidemic, probably something that disappointed a lot of readers, maybe.

Here is a review by The Guardian.