The travelling Symphony have a saying on the side of one of their caravans - ‘Survival is insufficient’ and the book emphasises the message that is not enough just to survive - society depends on kindness and needs art. It’s an incredibly thought provoking book. This was one of the strongest parts of the book for me, and it reminded me a bit of the TV show ‘Lost’. The book move’s back and forth between the present and the past, focusing on Kirstin, Arthur, Miranda, Clarke and Leevan and the connections between them. This part of the book shows you just how much the world has changed. We follow a a theatre troupe called the Travelling Symphony, who move around performing Shakespeare and playing music, which is where we find Kirstin again. Most of the action in ‘Station eleven’ takes place in the great lakes region, where scattered bands of survivors still live.
The pandemic that takes place here is a deadly swine flu that works extremely fast, and kills most of the worlds 7 billion population. It’s in the aftermath of this event that the world outside starts to disintegrate, as people fall sick. Later, Arthurs ex wife Miranda and his friend Clark get a phone call about his death. One of the child actors, a little girl called Kirstin, watches on. An audience member called Leevan attempts resuscitation but to no avail. The book starts during a production of King Lear, when famous Hollywood actor, Arthur Leander, collapses. I recently felt enough time had passed, but I really shouldn’t have worried because the focus isn’t really on the event itself but rather the aftermath, about resilience and how to find hope. ‘Station eleven’ by Emily St John Mandel had been on my radar for a while, but I was reluctant to read it because it was about a pandemic.
0 kommentar(er)
