Station Eleven

I enjoyed this! The story is told in cuts back and forth through time but I never got the feeling it was a gimmick. Mandel has a larger point to make. Larger, even, than the surface attraction of a post apocalyptic story.

Obviously reading this during the height of the Omicron variant is unsettling and I may have put up a few emotional blockers while getting through this however, the writing is beautiful and the plot is impressively woven.

I love how it focused on people and their interconnected lives in the setting of an apocalypse without focusing on the setting itself too much.

4.5

A really enjoyable read. I am not into hardcore apocalypse porn, so I like how she glossed over a lot of terrible and potentially gory details. This isn't SciFi, it is a fictional account about people, the choices they make, and the consequences that they have to live with. It just happens to be set at the end of civilization.

Audiobook read by Kirsten Potter.

The story: Very engrossing and not your typical world ending pandemic story. I read a lot of this type and this is a winner.

The narration: Well done, no distractions.

Favorite book of 2014. Blew me away. I'll say more when I've had time to process it. I will say this-this is the first book to haunt me this year. Read it!

Edit: This is going to sound really...naive, perhaps, but one of the parts I enjoyed the most about this book was the glimpse of hope at the end. I enjoy reading dystopic novels, and can usually handle the dreariness and hopelessness, but this made for a nice change. This is a difficult one for me to explain why I liked it so much. Perhaps because it takes place in the Great Lakes region and I'm fascinated with what it would be like to experience something like this in my home state?

2nd Edit: Reread in 2019 and it still holds up.