Disappointment Sandwich

Station Eleven is a riveting book that takes the lives of many people and intertwines them in ways that keep the audience wanting more; however, the audience will probably be disappointed in the end.  To start the book, an actor falls dramatically on stage, and an audience member immediately comes up onto the stage and starts performing CPR for the already dead man.  This is followed by the entrance of a young girl who is quickly ushered off and then the emergency workers come.  This is clearly foreshadowing from the author as to who the main characters will be.

After a slow start though, there comes the line that turns everything around and the story becomes interesting.  The other actors from the show are all in a bar and then the narrator says: “Of all of them there at the bar that night, the bartender was the one who survived the longest. He died three weeks later on the road out of the city” (Mandel 15).  This line will turn even the most boring story into a book that cannot be put down.  The next chapter explains the event that opens up the book.  The Georgia Flu starts in Eastern Europe and quickly spreads throughout the world to decimate 99% of the human population.  What’s left are only a few main characters that are followed throughout the rest of the book in multiple smaller stories.

Emily St. John Mandel does a good job of giving each character its own life and its own reasoning in becoming a crucial part to the book.  The book starts in the center of the story, so throughout the rest of the book, the timeline goes back and forth through many of the chapters.  For some readers, this may be difficult to wrap their head around, but for others, this could be exceedingly  appealing.  After many small stories; and going through the main characters lives before and after the Georgia Flu, the characters all come together for the end for an anti-climatic finish. Woohoo!  Yes, it is impressive that an author could intertwine so many storylines so flawlessly, and yes, it does make for a good book, but in the end, the characters meet each other and that is it.  There is no real point for them all to meet up other than to satisfy the reader’s yearn for a connection.

Ending the book like this is unfortunate, as the rest of the book was very interesting.  Emily St John Mandel wrote a bestseller level book but there was no way of making a significant connection between the characters.  At best, all the characters knew Arthur but there was nothing to do with that information other than put it into the makeshift museum in the new settlement.  This is unfortunate because at the very end, the characters see light in the distance and do not even go towards it, which is very anti-climatic and leaves the reader expecting more.