I was initially confused about the decision to start a book that it is ultimately about the apocalypse with a tragic focus on the unrelated death of Arthur Leander. How can a personal tragedy be related to the apocalypse? How can we care when several million people are about to die? But ultimately that's kind of the point of Station Eleven. It's less about the apocalypse and more about everyone ever known to Arthur Leander in the peri-apocalyptic time from his first wife to the paramedic who tried to resuscitate him. It's a very character-focused exploration with some intertwining threads. The intense character study plays nicely with the themes of the book: not how humans survive the apocalypse, but really how humanity survives, with art and culture and museums and language. And in that, how individuals survive with their individuality. This is really a new approach to a pretty tired genre.

Sometimes, St. John Mandel is a little too on the nose, but it still usually hits home. For instance: the motto inscribed on the Symphony's van: "Survival is Insufficient," or the fact that most of the characters belong to a traveling band of Shakespearean players. It really only rankled when she tried to draw parallels between Arthur having multiple wives (sequentially) being completely accepted in the conventional time line, while the prophet's, Arthur's son (in a plot-twist I saw coming on like, page 2) multiple wives are condemned, perhaps because he has them in parallel and also, a potential wife is 12. Similarly, the ironic cross-cut from Arthur's first wife bemoaning the likelihood that Kirsten will amount to nothing with her extreme competence and self-protection in the post-apocalyptic world. We get it: some people really came into their own in an apocalypse and it provides an opportunity for humanity to be cleansed. Great.

On the whole, I found Station Eleven to be a really unique and interesting take on the post-apocalyptic genre, with some beautiful character portraits.