Book Review – Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

A thoughtful, gently nostalgic, beautifully written, before and after, journey through a post-apocalyptic world.

I loved this book!

I liked:
The way all the characters were connected and how beautifully it all came together in the end. Even though there were little clues and my suspicions grew as to who was connected to who and how, that was part of the enjoyment.
The writing style was unpretentious and it was an enjoyable and easy read, yet beautifully descriptive.
I liked, or at least felt empathy with, all the characters, even the bad guys, as they were all victims of their circumstances.
The plot held my interest and I wanted to keep reading to see what was going to happen next. I couldn’t put it down.
The more hopeful view of a post-apocalyptical world than we usually see in this genre. Although there had been violence and horror in the past, this seemed to be in the minority now, and people were, generally, kind and loving, and supportive and cooperative.
The positive view on human nature.
The fact that it had a bit of everything – action, romance, drama and science fiction.

I didn’t like:
Very little.
At times, I got slightly irritated when the story jumped back to a different character and their story in a different time and place when I was hooked in to the story unfolding in the previous chapter. However, this was part of what made the book such a good read!
It took me a while to get under the skin of some of the characters because we just got glimpses of them all at the start of the book, and there were so many of them. However, again, this was part of the structure of the book and all was revealed and made perfect sense in the end