One-line takeaway
Art might be the only effective mechanism for restoring ‘meaning’ after a civilization collapses.
What is Station Eleven about?
Station Eleven is a dystopian novel in which humanity has fallen victim to a deadly virus. Ironically, the novel was published just before the covid pandemic struck the globe.
That said, this is not just a story about a pandemic, which is perhaps one of the main reasons for its success, that it presents one of the finest “approaches” to restoring a civilization after it has been completely destroyed: art.
And there’s also a TV miniseries based on this story, starring Mackenzie Davis, Himesh Patel, and Matilda Lawler.
Summary and review
The novel takes place after the virus sweeps across the world and wipes out most of humanity.
The story revolves around a group of people (Travelling Symphony), who turned themselves to artists and travel around North America, performing arts for survivors.
In terms of character development, the author has taken a rather novel approach, which might not be to everyone’s taste. Not only does she jump from one “Phase” to another, she selects a moment (a slow and relatively insignificant one) and then tells us what happens in the future to the characters involved in that particular scene and then returns back to the present, which I find to be unique, and interesting.
Character development was remarkably well done despite the fact that it could be extremely challenging in this type of novel. With such a smooth character buildup, this will not be a book that you read a few pages and then completely forgot about. This book will keep you guessing and make you curious until the end to find out what happens next.
This is a true page turner.
The key premise of the book that’s intriguing and fundamentally relevant is that no matter what happens to the world, people have not given up on restoring ‘quality of life’, which is not just providing food and shelter, but also surrounding ourselves with art, which, in hindsight, has kept humanity sane for thousands of years.
As the novel reads, “All three caravans of the Travelling Symphony are labelled as such, THE TRAVELLING SYMPHONY lettered in white on both sides, but the lead caravan carries an additional line of text: Because survival is insufficient.”
