Emily St. John Mandel post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven
delves deep into the potential of the novel as a form to produce a work that is
both complex in structure while approachable in style and the elements of
story. St. John Mandel weaves back and forth to both the time before a flu
killed ninety-nine percent of people, and after.
Along the way she introduces characters, leaves them, and
returns to them again. Although this can sometimes present a complex
arrangement, at least the mid-point of the novel she has introduced all the
characters, and we start to see how they interlock.
And interlock the do.
St. John Mandel wrote mystery novels before this work, and she has the
clever ability to leave clues and suggestions of things to come; and like a mystery
writer, she is skilled at tying up all the far flung threads of the story she
has written.
Station Eleven is bold in execution and elegant in
style. It illustrates that the whole
spate of post-apocalyptic novels which has appeared in the last decade has yet
to run out of creative steam.
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