Audiobook Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

• Release Date: September 9th 2014

• Audiobook Hours: 10 hours and 41 minutes
• Genre: Literary….Science Fiction ?
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• Publisher: Random House Audio

I feel like three years ago you couldn’t trip anywhere in the book-sphere without falling into this book. Station Eleven is the fascinating and deeply haunting story of what happens after a flu epidemic kills 99% of the Earth’s population and infrastructure collapses.

Everything I knew about this book happens in the first 20 pages; An actor in a production of King Lear dies on stage in front of child actor Kirsten Raymonde. Jump cut to 20 years later where Kirsten is part of a traveling symphony, a theater troupe that performs Shakespeare in the small towns dotting the the desolate and often dangerous North American landscape.

I am seriously in awe of the narrative structure of this book. The novel moves back and forth through time, telling stories of people who were in the theater that night with Kirsten. Mandel effortlessly weaves her characters fates through and around each other. There is also kind of a twist, I’m not sure how soon you’re supposed to see it, but it took me by surprise.

I’ve read my fair share of dystopian but something about this world was just so muchAnd I Must Scream. I think it’s because there are so many unknowns about how this plague happened and so many of the adults are still grieving for what they once had

Audiobook narrator Kristen Potter provides a smooth and careful narration. Her male voices and accents were spot on, I see she does some romance so I’ll have to check those out !

Station Eleven is a riveting story about civilization and what it means to survive when you’re forced to walk out of one world and into another.