![]() … No more fire departments, no more police. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one’s hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite. The world, as they have come to know it, exists no more. In a few short weeks Georgia Flu sweeps across the globe and claims the lives of 99.99 per cent of the world’s population. The few survivors must learn to live without power, mechanised transport or antibiotics. Tragedy on a considerably vaster scale follows quickly via a flu pandemic so virulent its victims die within 48 hours. Despite the efforts of Jeevan, a trainee paramedic, and a cardiologist, both of whom who were in the audience, he dies. Part way through a performance of King Lear, the renowned Hollywood actor Arthur Leander collapses. The combination of those realities made it possible for me to accept the disruptive elements of Station Eleven more readily. And then the opening scene takes me to a very familiar experience, that of being in the theatre watching a performance of King Lear. The locations are also real with most of the action taking place in Toronto, Chicago and the shores of Lakes Huron and Michigan. The characters’ names for one thing are largely realistic - admittedly one of them is called Jeevan which is not a name I’ve ever heard of before, but you can’t get much more down to earth than Arthur and Clark. But Mandel’s imagined world, while disintegrated, degraded and thoroughly unpleasant, is recognisable enough for me to feel it could still be real. Usually when I hear a novel is set in a dystopian or post-apocalyptic world, my reaction is akin to that of encountering the most fetid smell possible. I’m not going to promise that this book has made be a sci-fi convert but if this is a taste of what’s available then I can certainly see me reading more in that line in the future. One book was mentioned over and over again: Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. ![]() Last month I put out an appeal here and via Twitter for recommendations of books that would help me break through my aversion to science fiction.
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