Station Eleven

Station Eleven is a 2014 novel by Emily St. John Mandel.[1][2][3] It is Mandel's fourth novel. The novel 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. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2015.[4]

Station Eleven
AuthorEmily St. John Mandel
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish
GenreTheater fiction
Publication date
2014
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages336
ISBN978-0385353304

The novel was well received by critics, with praise emphasizing the understated nature of Mandel's writing. It appeared on several end-of-year lists as one of the best novels of 2014.[5][6]

Plot summary

During a production of King Lear at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto, Jeevan watches as the actor playing Lear, Arthur Leander, has a heart attack. Since he has begun training as a paramedic, Jeevan tries to resuscitate Arthur, but is unsuccessful. Instead, he comforts one of the child actors in the production, Kirsten. After leaving the play, Jeevan goes for a walk in the snow and receives a call from his friend, a doctor. He warns Jeevan to get out of the city as the mysterious Georgia Flu is spreading rapidly and will soon become a full-blown pandemic. Jeevan loads up on supplies and goes to stay with his paraplegic brother. Many of the actors, actresses, 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 outbreak, can remember little of her life before Year Zero, but clings to a two-volume set of graphic novels given to her by Arthur before his death, titled Dr. 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 the town is now under the control of the Prophet, who rapes the young girls he claims as his "wives". The troupe quickly leaves town, and goes off-route to the 'Museum of Civilization', a settlement where they believe they might find their missing friends. However, en route, they discover a young stowaway who fled the town, as she was promised to the Prophet as his bride. 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, the graphic novel Dr. Eleven is an unpublished passion project by Arthur's first wife, Miranda. Fourteen years before the collapse of civilization, Miranda left an abusive relationship and married Arthur. As Arthur's fame as an actor hit its peak, Miranda realized he was having an affair with the woman who would become his second wife, Elizabeth. 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 turns out to be Jeevan. Years later, when Jeevan is trying to reinvent himself as an entertainment journalist, Arthur gives him an exclusive interview; he is leaving Elizabeth and their young son, Tyler, to be with another woman. Jeevan reflects on this while he and his brother Frank are quarantining in Frank's apartment. After weeks, they realize that no one is coming to save them. Frank, a paraplegic, commits suicide so Jeevan doesn't feel responsible for him. Jeevan embarks on a journey south, and after many years, finds a new settlement where he marries and becomes the town doctor.

In Year Zero, one of Arthur's friends, Clark, informs Elizabeth that Arthur is dead. Clark, Elizabeth and her son Tyler, happen to be on the same flight from New York City to Toronto to attend Arthur's funeral, until 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 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, explaining how they went missing. Kirsten, August, and Sayid leave for the Severn City Airport, but Kirsten is soon discovered by the Prophet himself. Just before he is about to kill her, he refers to the "Undersea," a place from the Dr. Eleven comics. Kirsten quotes lines from Dr. Eleven, distracting the Prophet long enough that a younger sentry (having a crisis of faith) shoots and kills him, 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, her attachment to Arthur, and that the Prophet was Tyler Leander. Clark takes Kirsten up to the watch tower of the airport, where there is a town to the south with electric lights, showing that civilization is beginning to take root again.

Five weeks later, Kirsten leaves with the Travelling Symphony for the town to the south. She gives one copy of Dr. Eleven to Clark's museum, as he begins to read it and recognizes a scene that is borrowed from a dinner party which he, Arthur and Miranda once attended.

Characters
  • Kirsten Raymonde – A former child actor from Toronto who is eight when the Georgia Flu destroys her world. Initially she and her brother are the only survivors in her family, but as they travel, he dies too. She joins the Travelling Symphony as a teenager and becomes obsessed with actor Arthur Leander, whose death she witnessed as a child.
  • Arthur Leander – A wildly successful film actor originally from the fictional Delano Island in British Columbia. Despite his success, Arthur is shiftless, unhappy, and marries three times. He dies onstage of a heart attack portraying King Lear at age 51; the same night the pandemic takes hold.
  • Jeevan Chaudhary – A former paparazzo, turned entertainment journalist, turned EMT, whose life intersects with Leander's at key moments.
  • Frank Chaudhary – Jeevan's paraplegic brother, a former combat reporter wounded in Afghanistan, now a ghostwriter who lives a life of solitude in his apartment.
  • Miranda Carroll – Arthur's first wife, eleven years his junior. She is initially an artist who is obsessed with creating her graphic novel, Station Eleven, about Dr. Eleven, a man who lives on a defunct planetary space station. She later becomes a proficient businesswoman. Shortly before Arthur's death, Miranda gives him two copies of the finally-completed graphic novel; which Arthur gives to his son, Tyler, and Kirsten. Mandel has said this is the character she most identifies with.[7]
  • Clark Thompson – Arthur's British best friend, whom he met while they were struggling actors. He then works as a corporate businessman, and post-collapse, reinvents himself as a curator to a museum of obsolete objects.
  • Tyler Leander – The son of Arthur and his second wife Elizabeth. He grows up in Jerusalem, estranged from his father, and is later stranded in the Severn City Airport settlement. He and his mother eventually leave with a religious cult, and he grows up to be the religious leader known as the Prophet.

Genre

Although many publications classified the novel as science fiction,[8][9][10] Mandel herself does not believe that the work belongs to that genre, as the novel does not include any instances of fictional technology.[11][12] Mandel has stated that the issue of labeling her work science fiction (as opposed to literary fiction) has followed her through all her novels.[11] Mandel's early work has been 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.[11] Station Eleven might also be classified as "theatre-fiction", which Graham Wolfe defines as "novels and stories that engage in concrete and sustained ways with theatre as artistic practice and industry".[13]

Adaptations
Main article: Station Eleven (miniseries)

A film adaptation of the novel is in development by Scott Steindorff.[14]

On October 18, 2019, it was announced that Station Eleven would be adapted into a 10-episode miniseries that will premiere on HBO Max. Hiro Murai is set to direct, with Patrick Somerville as showrunner and writer. They will both also serve as executive producers alongside Scott Steindorff, Scott Delman, and Dylan Russell. The miniseries will star Mackenzie Davis as Kirsten and Himesh Patel as Jeevan. Gael García Bernal has been cast as Arthur, and David Wilmot as Clark.[15]

Awards

The novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in May 2015, beating novels including The Girl with All the Gifts and Memory of Water.[16] The committee highlighted the novel's focus on the survival of human culture after an apocalypse, as opposed to the survival of humanity itself.[16] The novel was also a finalist for the National Book Award, ultimately losing to Phil Klay's short story cycle Redeployment.[17] It was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, as well as the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.[18]

The novel won the Toronto Book Award in October 2015.[19]

References
  1. Gibert, Tiffany (5 September 2014). "Tiffany Gibert on Station Eleven". LA Review of Books. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  2. Nunez, Sigrid (12 September 2014). "Shakespeare for Survivors 'Station Eleven,' by Emily St. John Mandel". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 July 2015.
  3. Crum, Maddie (11 September 2014). "The Book We're Talking About: 'Station Eleven' By Emily St. John Mandel". Huffington Post. Retrieved 19 July 2015.
  4. Anders, Charlie Jane (6 May 2015). "Station Eleven Wins This Year's Arthur C. Clarke Award!". io9. Retrieved 19 July 2015.
  5. Washington Post (20 November 2014). "The ten best books of 2014". The Washington Post. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  6. NPR (30 December 2014). "Best Novels of 2014". NPR. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  7. "No One Stays Forever: An Interview with Emily St. John Mandel". 2014-08-18. Archived from the original on 2018-08-13. Retrieved 2017-01-17.
  8. NPR Staff (20 June 2015). "Survival Is Insufficient: 'Station Eleven' Preserves Art After The Apocalypse". NPR. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  9. Andrews, Charlie Jane (30 December 2014). "The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Books Of 2014". io9. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  10. Hightower, Nancy (16 September 2014). "Sci-fi & fantasy by Emily St. John Mandel, Robert Jackson Bennett, Lauren Beukes". The Washington Post. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  11. Charles, Ron (15 October 2015). "Sorry, Emily St. John Mandel: Resistance is futile". The Washington Post. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  12. St. John Mandel, Emily (15 October 2014). "Great piece. I actually don't think of Station Eleven as sci-fi, but am fully prepared to concede that I may be alone in this..." Twitter / Emily St. John Mandel. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  13. Wolfe, Graham. Theatre-Fiction in Britain from Henry James to Doris Lessing: Writing in the Wings. Routledge, 2020. 2.
  14. "Best-Seller 'Station Eleven' Acquired by 'Jane Got a Gun' Producer". The Hollywood Reporter. 2015-02-10. Retrieved 2015-06-15.
  15. Andreeva, Nellie. "Mackenzie Davis & Himesh Patel To Star In 'Station Eleven' HBO Max Limited Series". Deadline. Retrieved 1 November 2019.
  16. Arthur C. Clarke Award (1 May 2015). "2015 Winner". Arthur C. Clarke Award. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  17. Alter, Alexandra (19 November 2014). "National Book Award Goes to Phil Klay for His Short Story Collection". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 January 2019.
  18. PEN/Faulkner Award. "2015". Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  19. "Emily St. John Mandel wins 2015 Toronto Book Award". Toronto Star, October 15, 2015.
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