Reading: Station Eleven

      On the recommendation of SF writer (and friend of a friend) Marko Kloos, I recently read Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel.  It's an excellent book, well worth reading.*

      The storytelling is unusual, a complex interweaving of individual narratives that cross and recross over time.  The writer handles it neatly, seamlessly, through a harrowing a set of events.  Station Eleven fits within the broad category of "end-of-the-word stories," along with A Canticle for Leibowitz, Alas, Babylon, On The Beach,  Dean Ing's "Quantrill" trilogy and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Some of them are mentioned in the end-matter of Station Eleven, but the work most like it is conspicuously absent and I don't know why.

      The novel begins in a comfortable world and ends on a note of hope, after a succession of terrible journeys.  So does Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower.  Both include a new religion, too, though in very different ways. If you liked one, I think you'll like the other.  Butler, who we lost in 2006, was a talented writer but is often overlooked.  She shouldn't be.
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* Trailers I have seen for the HBO series based on the book don't resemble the story I saw as I read.  YMMV.