lightreads

Station Eleven

4/5. Intersecting stories of a few dozen people in the years before and the years after the flu wipes out most of civilization, generally focusing on Kirsten, who travels with a symphony and Shakespeare troop through post-apocalypse America.

I wonder if this book would have worked as well on me when I'm in my usual crispy-fried cynic state, as opposed to my current weird hormone-induced weepy state. But whoever you are, you're you, I guess. I'm a weepy me right now, and this book sure did work on me.

It's a slow meander that spirals in and out of the years before and after the flu. There's something almost meditative in its convolutions. I went in thinking with some weariness, here we go with the Shakespeare, sigh, but actually, this book is not really about Shakespeare at all. There's one significant deployment of Lear, and the fact that it is so singular makes it work. In reality, this book is about the art we carry with us, and living in the wreckage of fallen civilization, and memories and what they are worth. The central text with which the novel is concerned is actually a fictional comicbook that a few of the characters have read. It's about hiding on a space station and living on these tiny, isolated islands, and yeah, it's really very on-the-nose. The whole thing is on-the-nose. But gently, somehow?

And yeah, I basically started leaking tears at the telescope scene, when she looks through and sees lights in a grid, and doesn't understand what she's looking at. And continued to leak periodically through the rest of the book. Oof.