The connections between people, the way we touch each other's lives before we meet or without meeting at all, is fascinating.
Station Eleven is rooted in these threads. In the future the world's population has been decimated by a mutated strain of swine flu. In this post-apocoliptic world there is a traveling theater group called The Symphony. They are a rag-tag group of musicians and actors that travel from settlement to settlement playing music and performing Shakespeare's plays.
Our POV* character is Kristen who was a child actress when the pandemic started. Right as the flu was spreading across Russia and Europe she was in Toronto as part of the cast of King Lear. The king was being played by an aging actor, Arthur Leander, with a string of ex-wives and a young son he doesn't see enough of. Arthur is very kind to Kristen, giving her his attention and two comic books, Station Eleven numbers 1 & 2, that were drawn by his first ex-wife Miranda. On this last night before a packed house Arthur has a heart attack on stage. In the audience is Jeevan who is a former paparazzo, former entertainment reporter, and current paramedic student. He runs on stage and gives Arthur CPR. This is the beginning of the story and the threads that run through it.
The story jumps from Year 25 after the end of the world as we know it, the day of Arthur's death and the early days of the new world. Slowly the connections between the characters is unraveled and we see how their lives and deaths are important to the others and are leading some of them towards each other.
Go on and get your hands on a copy and read this book.
(Finished June 20, 2015)
No comments:
Post a Comment