![]() First edition | |
Author | Emily St. John Mandel |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Post-apocalyptic fiction, Theatre-fiction |
Publisher | Knopf |
Publication date | 2014 |
Publication place | Canada |
Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Pages | 336 |
ISBN | 978-0385353304 |
Station Eleven is a novel by the Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel. [1] [2] [3] It takes place in the Great Lakes region before and after a fictional swine flu pandemic, known as the "Georgia Flu", has devastated the world, killing most of the population. The book was published in 2014, and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award the following year. [4]
The novel was well received by critics, [5] with the understated nature of Mandel's writing receiving particular praise. It appeared on several best-of-year lists. [6] [7] As of 2020, [update] it had sold 1.5 million copies. [8]
A ten-part television adaptation of the same name premiered on HBO Max in December 2021.
The book was selected for the 2023 edition of Canada Reads , where it was championed by Michael Greyeyes. [9]
During a production of King Lear at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto, aspiring paramedic Jeevan Chaudhary watches as the actor playing Lear, Arthur Leander, has a heart attack. Jeevan tries to resuscitate Arthur but is unsuccessful. Instead, Jeevan comforts one of the child actors in the production, Kirsten Raymonde. After leaving the play, Jeevan goes for a walk in the snow and receives a call from his old friend who is a doctor in Toronto. He warns Jeevan to get out of the city, as the mysterious and deadly Georgia Flu is spreading rapidly and will soon become a full-blown pandemic. Jeevan loads up on supplies and goes to stay with his brother Frank. Many of the actors and others that had gathered to mourn Arthur's death die within the next three weeks.
Twenty years later, Kirsten is part of a nomadic group of actors and musicians known as the Travelling Symphony. Kirsten, who was eight at the time of the outbreak, can remember little of her life before Year Zero, but clings to a two-volume set of comic books given to her by Arthur before his death, titled Station Eleven. The troupe operates on a two-year cycle touring the Great Lakes region, performing Shakespeare plays and classical music, while Kirsten scavenges abandoned homes for props, costumes, and traces of Arthur in tabloid magazines.
The troupe intends to reunite with two members they left behind –the pregnant Charlie, and her husband, Jeremy –at a small town. Upon arriving, they are disturbed to find that their friends are missing, and that the town is now under the control of the Prophet, a cult leader who has raped several young girls he claims as his "wives". The troupe quickly leaves, going off-route to the Museum of Civilization, a settlement where they believe they might find their missing friends. En route, they discover a young stowaway who fled the town, as she was promised to the Prophet as his next bride. The troupe worries that the cult will come after them. Shortly after, members of the troupe begin to disappear, until finally the entire troupe is gone, leaving only Kirsten and her friend August. Frightened, they continue on to the Museum, hoping to be reunited with others.
Unbeknownst to Kirsten, Station Eleven is an unpublished passion project by Arthur's first wife Miranda Carroll. Fourteen years before the collapse of civilization, Miranda left an abusive boyfriend and married Arthur, a friend from her hometown in coastal British Columbia who has since become a famous actor. As Arthur's fame hit its peak, Miranda realized he was having an affair with the woman who would become his second wife, actress Elizabeth Colton. The night that Miranda discovers the affair, she walks out of her home and asks a paparazzo outside if he has a cigarette; the paparazzo is Jeevan. Years later, when Jeevan is trying to reinvent himself as an entertainment journalist, Arthur gives him an exclusive interview, telling Jeevan that he is leaving Elizabeth and their young son Tyler to be with another woman. Jeevan reflects on this while he and Frank are quarantining in Frank's apartment. After many weeks, they realize that no one is coming to save them. Frank, who is paraplegic, kills himself to spare Jeevan from feeling responsible for him. Jeevan embarks on a journey south, and after many years, finds a new settlement in Virginia, where he marries and becomes the town doctor.
In Year Zero, Arthur's best friend, Clark Thompson, informs Elizabeth that Arthur is dead. Clark, Elizabeth, and Tyler happen to board the same flight from New York City to Toronto to attend Arthur's funeral, but it is grounded at the Severn City Airport due to the pandemic. The passengers, having nowhere to go, create a settlement in the airport, and Clark becomes the "curator" of the Museum of Civilization, where he gathers artifacts from the old world such as iPhones and laptop computers. While most of the airport survivors adapt to their new life, Elizabeth and Tyler embrace religious zealotry, believing that the pandemic happened for a reason and spared those who were good. After two years, they leave with a religious cult.
In the present, Kirsten and August find a group of the Prophet's men holding Sayid, a member of their troupe, hostage. They kill the men and free Sayid, who explains that their friend Dieter was killed, while another hostage escaped, warned the troupe, and sent them on another road; this explains how the rest of the Symphony went missing. The trio leave for the Severn City Airport, but Kirsten is discovered by the Prophet. Just before he is about to kill her, he refers to the "Undersea," a place from the Station Eleven comics. Kirsten quotes lines from Station Eleven, distracting the Prophet long enough that a younger cult sentry, having a crisis of faith, shoots and kills the Prophet, before taking his own life. The trio continues to the Museum of Civilization, where they are reunited with Charlie, Jeremy, and the rest of the troupe. Clark, who has lived in the museum for twenty years, realizes who Kirsten is and her connection to Arthur, and that the Prophet was Tyler Leander. At night, Clark takes Kirsten up to the control tower of the airport, where he shows her there is a town with electric lights, suggesting civilization is beginning to take root again.
Five weeks later, Kirsten leaves with the Travelling Symphony for this town. She gives one copy of Station Eleven to Clark's museum. He begins to read it and recognizes a scene that is based on a dinner party which he, Arthur, and Miranda once attended.
Although many publications classified the novel as science fiction, [12] [13] [14] Mandel does not believe that the work belongs to that genre, as the novel does not include any instances of fictional technology. [15] [16] She said the issue of labeling her work science fiction (as opposed to literary fiction) has followed her through all her novels. [15] Her early work was classified as crime fiction, and she has stated she consciously chose to avoid overtones of mystery and crime in this work in order to avoid being "pigeonholed" as a mystery novelist. [15] Station Eleven has also been discussed as "theatre-fiction". [17]
According to Book Marks, the book received "positive" reviews based on six critic reviews with three being "rave" and two being "positive" and one being "mixed". [18] On Bookmarks November/December 2014 issue, a magazine that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a (3.5 out of 5) based on critic reviews with a critical summary saying, "A few critics faulted the leaps of logic and characters who lack a "penetrating sense of the day-to-day struggle of vulnerable human beings lacking the basic amenities of life" (New York Times Book Review), but these are small missteps in this "book about gratitude, about life right now, if we can live to look back on it" (Minneapolis Star Tribune)". [19] [20]
The novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in May 2015, beating novels including The Girl with All the Gifts and Memory of Water . [21] The committee highlighted the novel's focus on the survival of human culture after an apocalypse, as opposed to the survival of humanity. [21] The novel won the Toronto Book Award in October 2015. [22]
The novel was also a finalist for the National Book Award, ultimately losing to Phil Klay's short story cycle Redeployment . [23] It was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, [24] as well as the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.
In 2015, it was announced that a film adaptation of the novel was in development by Scott Steindorff. [25]
On October 18, 2019, it was announced that Station Eleven would instead be adapted into a miniseries for HBO Max. The series premiered on December 16, 2021, [26] with Hiro Murai directing and Patrick Somerville as showrunner and writer. Both also serve as executive producers, alongside Scott Steindorff, Scott Delman, and Dylan Russell. The miniseries stars Mackenzie Davis as Kirsten and Himesh Patel as Jeevan. Gael García Bernal portrays Arthur, and David Wilmot, Clark. [27]
Thomas Graeme Cameron Gibson was a Canadian novelist. He was a Member of the Order of Canada (1992), a Senior Fellow of Massey College and one of the organizers of the Writers Union of Canada. He was also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community.
Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020.
The Devil Wears Prada is a 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger about a young woman who is hired as a personal assistant to a powerful fashion magazine editor, a job that becomes nightmarish as she struggles to keep up with her boss's grueling schedule and demeaning demands. It spent six months on the New York Times bestseller list and became the basis for the 2006 film of the same name, starring Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, and Emily Blunt. The novel is considered by many to be an example of the "chick lit" genre.
Breathing Lessons is a Pulitzer Prize–winning 1988 novel by American author Anne Tyler. It is her eleventh novel and won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Lauren Weisberger is an American writer and author of the 2003 bestseller The Devil Wears Prada, a roman à clef of her experience as an assistant to Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Weisberger worked as a writer and editor for Vogue and Departures magazines prior to authoring The Devil Wears Prada, which was adapted into a film of the same name in 2006. She has since published seven other novels.
Miranda July is an American film director, screenwriter, actress and author. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital presentations and live performance art.
Ordeal by Innocence is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 3 November 1958 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at twelve shillings and sixpence (12/6) and the US edition at $2.95.
The Devil Wears Prada is a 2006 American comedy-drama film directed by David Frankel and produced by Wendy Finerman. The screenplay, written by Aline Brosh McKenna, is based on the 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger. The film stars Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt.
Emily Pohl-Weary is a Canadian novelist, poet, university professor, and magazine editor. She is the granddaughter of science fiction writers and editors Judith Merril and Frederik Pohl.
Louise Penny is a Canadian author of mystery novels set in the Canadian province of Quebec centred on the work of francophone Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Penny's first career was as a radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). After she turned to writing, she won numerous awards for her work, including the Agatha Award for best mystery novel of the year five times, including four consecutive years (2007–2010), and the Anthony Award for best novel of the year five times, including four consecutive years (2010–2013). Her novels have been published in 23 languages.
Michael Bedard is a Canadian children's writer. He was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1971 with a BA in philosophy and English. He began writing when his former high school teacher showed him works of Emily Dickinson and T. S. Eliot. Bedard currently lives in Toronto with his wife Martha. He has four children and six grandchildren.
Patrick Somerville is an American novelist and television writer living in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
Emily St. John Mandel is a Canadian novelist and essayist. She has written six novels, including Station Eleven (2014), The Glass Hotel (2020), and Sea of Tranquility (2022). Station Eleven, which has been translated into 33 languages, has been adapted into a limited series on HBO Max. The Glass Hotel was translated into twenty languages and was selected by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2020. Sea of Tranquility was published in April 2022 and debuted at number three on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Bear is a novel by Canadian author Marian Engel, published in 1976. It won the Governor General's Literary Award the same year. It is Engel's fifth novel, and her most famous. The story tells of a lonely archivist sent to work in northern Ontario, where she enters into a sexual relationship with a bear. The Canadian Encyclopedia calls the book "the most controversial novel ever written in Canada".
Stitchers is an American science fiction crime drama television series created by Jeffrey Alan Schechter. The show was picked up to series on September 29, 2014, and premiered on June 2, 2015, on ABC Family. In an October 2016 Facebook Live chat, it was announced that the series was renewed for a third season, which aired from June 5 to August 14, 2017. On September 15, 2017, Freeform canceled the series after three seasons.
Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is a Canadian novelist and short story writer.
Kurt Baumeister is an American novelist, essayist, critic, and poet. His debut novel, a satirical thriller entitled Pax Americana was selected as a Best Book of 2017 by [PANK] Magazine. He has written for Salon, Rain Taxi, Electric Literature, Guernica, Entropy, The Nervous Breakdown, The Rumpus, The Good Men Project, and others. He has an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College and is a contributing editor at The Weeklings. "Review Microbrew," his review column, is published by The Nervous Breakdown. Baumeister is an editor with 7.13 Books in Brooklyn, NY.
Station Eleven is an American post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction television miniseries created by Patrick Somerville based on the 2014 novel of the same name by Emily St. John Mandel. The miniseries premiered on HBO Max on December 16, 2021, and ran for ten episodes until January 13, 2022.
The Glass Hotel is a 2020 novel by Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel. It is Mandel's fifth novel, and the first since winning the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2015. It follows the aftermath of a disturbing graffiti incident at a hotel on Vancouver Island and the collapse of an international Ponzi scheme.
Sea of Tranquility is a 2022 novel by the Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel. It is Mandel's sixth novel and a work of speculative fiction.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)