Retro Review: Station Eleven
/When I started this blog, I had been posting reviews on Goodreads for about 6 months. In the interest of having all of my book writing in one place, I will post one of these old reviews every Friday. They weren't written with a blog in mind, so please forgive the lack of summary and off-the-cuff tone.
5 stars. Whenever I think about this book, it gives me this ... warm, chocolatey feeling. It's rich and deep and full of little insights that compliment the sweeping themes. Highly recommend. It depicts the life and death of a famous Hollywood actor and how those who knew him - who connected with him in some way - survive (not just survive, live) after a virus kills most of humanity.
It's certainly not a traditional apocalypse novel, but how exactly is an apocalypse supposed to go?
Among the many lessons in this book, I think my favorite is this: we are ultimately in charge of our own actions and choices, but it's okay to make mistakes, because wonderful, brilliant, artistic things exist in the world, like Shakespeare and comic books and concertos.
Yes, this book is definitely a testament to the fine arts. It claims that even in a world in which humans must prioritize survival over everything else, they will still create and appreciate creativity.
It's full of extremes: the extreme darkness and extreme insanity one would expect in the midst of an apocalypse, but there is also extreme love. I had no idea where it was headed - tragedy? Romance? Tragic romance? But (just like many of Shakespeare's plays, for example), it transcended genre and offered many deep insights without leaning on cliches.
Definitely one of my favorite reads last year.