STATION ELEVEN – NOW AN HBO MAX SERIES!

December 27, 2021 Mar

Set in the days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.

NOW A HBO MAX SERIES! A MELANCHOLIC, PHILOSOPHICAL TAKE ON THE END OF THE WORLD

This was disturbing and beautiful in equal parts.

“Station Eleven” is not the fast-paced, plot-driven apocalyptic story where characters are constantly fighting for survival.

As the literary fiction work it is, it focuses on the characters and the plot moves sloooow, so you have to take your time as well if you want to fully enjoy it. The best way to read this book is when you are in a somber reading mood.

However there is enough tension to keep you interested, which comes from knowing a pandemic wiped out 99% of the world population and what is left of humanity is scattered around a lawless world in small, vulnerable settlements, slowly fading away into oblivion.

Traveling between settlements is a despairing but relative safe experience. The characters, and therefore us the readers, are faced with immense amount of time to ponder about the ephemeral quality of life. All this solemnity is balanced with the whimsicality of the traveling symphony/theater company. So, this is an experience like no other!

Station Eleven is like slowly drifting on a hot-air balloon above a devastated and desolate world… with binoculars. You get a bird-eye-view of the pocalypse but you also zoom in on specific details of human significance and reevaluate the purpose of the human experience.

I cannot recommend this book enough!

You most likely enjoy this book if you enjoy reading books of these categories and topics: