478 pages
français language
Published Aug. 29, 2016 by Payot & Rivages.
Un soir d’hiver à l’Elgin Theatre de Toronto, le célèbre acteur Arthur Leander s’écroule sur scène, en pleine représentation du Roi Lear. Plus rien ne sera jamais comme avant. Dans un monde où la civilisation s’est effondrée, une troupe itinérante d’acteurs et de musiciens parcourt la région du lac Michigan et tente de préserver l’espoir en jouant du Shakespeare et du Beethoven. Ceux qui ont connu l’ancien monde l’évoquent avec nostalgie, alors que la nouvelle génération peine à se le représenter. De l’humanité ne subsistent plus que l’art et le souvenir. Peut-être l’essentiel.
A book I have kept thinking of years after reading it. Great prose, plot, characters, universe - it has it all.
My favorite scenes are of Jeevan and Frank in Toronto as the pandemic is unfolding.
If not for food-, sleep- and toilet breaks I almost read this in one go. Harrowing and layered story that gives a surprising entanglement of characters.
Even days after finishing I still had ah-ha moments when I suddenly understood how and why some things happened and who was connected to whom.
Wish there was a sequel where you learn more about the characters. Some parts are eerily recognizable now we had a real pandemic.
Mind you; the book is not sci-fi! It is our world after a pandemic; no fancy, crazy tech is used or invented in the book.
Enjoyable thought experiment on what the world might be like after a colossal epidemic. Unfortunately, my reading was a bit disjointed, due to no fault of the author, because my copy had 20 pages ripped out of it at the very end. I had to wait for a library copy to continue. So my review is not coherent and a result... But I can say it is beautifully written and if you need a captivating sci-fi read, you'll enjoy this book.
I downloaded this book from Kindle on Amazon's recommendation. I have never been so sorry to do so.
Station Eleven is an apocalypse novel in which none of the characters worry about food, clothing, or shelter. It is based around an actor who dies on stage during King Lear, and the various people who are associated with that person, including his first wife, who privately draws a comic book called Station Eleven, which is read by some of the younger people in the book.
There are few things I find unforgivable in a book, but excessive nostalgia and sentimentality are amongst them. Station Eleven is roughly 50% characters reminicing about their pasts, and when it isn't alluding to the past it's alluding to the near future where they're all dead. It's the same trick, every time, all the time. Multiple times from the same perspective. At first I was shocked, …
I downloaded this book from Kindle on Amazon's recommendation. I have never been so sorry to do so.
Station Eleven is an apocalypse novel in which none of the characters worry about food, clothing, or shelter. It is based around an actor who dies on stage during King Lear, and the various people who are associated with that person, including his first wife, who privately draws a comic book called Station Eleven, which is read by some of the younger people in the book.
There are few things I find unforgivable in a book, but excessive nostalgia and sentimentality are amongst them. Station Eleven is roughly 50% characters reminicing about their pasts, and when it isn't alluding to the past it's alluding to the near future where they're all dead. It's the same trick, every time, all the time. Multiple times from the same perspective. At first I was shocked, then I was appalled, and then finally I was embarrassed. Station Eleven doesn't simply overegg the pudding here: it puts icing on the wobbly undercooked blancmange and expects you to treat it like an artisanal pastry. Avoid.
