Station+Eleven+by+Emily+St.+John+Mandel

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= **Book Summary** = A flight from Russia lands in middle America, its passengers carrying a virus that explodes “like a neutron bomb over the surface of the earth.” In a blink, the world as we know it collapses. “No more ballgames played under floodlights,” Emily St. John Mandel writes in this smart and sober homage to life’s smaller pleasures, brutally erased by an apocalypse. “No more trains running under the surface of cities ... No more cities ... No more Internet ... No more avatars.” Survivors become scavengers, roaming the ravaged landscape or clustering in pocket settlements, some of them welcoming, some dangerous. What’s touching about the world of Station Eleven is its ode to what survived, in particular the music and plays performed for wasteland communities by a roving Shakespeare troupe, the Traveling Symphony, whose members form a wounded family of sorts. The story shifts deftly between the fraught post-apocalyptic world and, twenty years earlier, just before the apocalypse, the death of a famous actor, which has a rippling effect across the decades. It’s heartbreaking to watch the troupe strive for more than mere survival. At once terrible and tender, dark and hopeful, Station Elevenis a tragically beautiful novel that both mourns and mocks the things we cherish. –Neal Thompson  @http://www.amazon.com/Station-Eleven-Emily-John-Mandel-ebook/dp/B00J1IQUYM = = = About the Author = Emily St. John Mandel was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York.

Her fourth novel, //Station Eleven //, published in 2014 was long listed for the National Book Award. All three of her previous novels— //Last Night in Montreal, The Singer's Gun //, and //The Lola Quartet //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">—were Indie Next Picks, and //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">The Singer's Gun //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"> was the 2014 winner of the Prix Mystere de la Critique in France. Her short fiction and essays have been anthologized in numerous collections, including Best American Mystery Stories 2013. She is a staff writer for The Millions. She lives in New York City with her husband. ( //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">From the author's website //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">.)

= Discussion Questions = <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">1. Now that you’ve read the entire novel, go back and reread the passage by Czeslaw Milosz that serves as an epigraph. What does it mean? Why did Mandel choose it to introduce //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Station Eleven //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">2. Does the novel have a main character? Who would you consider it to be?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">3. Arthur Leander dies while performing King Lear, and the Traveling Symphony performs Shakespeare’s works. On page 57, Mandel writes, "Shakespeare was the third born to his parents, but the first to survive infancy. Four of his siblings died young. His son, Hamnet, died at eleven and left behind a twin. Plague closed the theaters again and again, death flickering over the landscape." How do Shakespearean motifs coincide with those of //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Station Eleven //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">, both the novel and the comic?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">4. Arthur’s death happens to coincide with the arrival of the Georgia Flu. If Jeevan had been able to save him, it wouldn’t have prevented the apocalypse. But how might the trajectory of the novel been different?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">5. What is the metaphor of the Station Eleven comic books? How does the Undersea connect to the events of the novel?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">6. "Survival is insufficient," a line from Star Trek: Voyager, is the Traveling Symphony’s motto. What does it mean to them?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">7. On page 62, the prophet discusses death: "I’m not speaking of the tedious variations on physical death. There’s the death of the body, and there’s the death of the soul. I saw my mother die twice." Knowing who his mother was, what do you think he meant by that?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">8. Certain items turn up again and again, for instance the comic books and the paperweight—things Arthur gave away before he died, because he didn’t want any more possessions. And Clark’s Museum of Civilization turns what we think of as mundane belongings into totems worthy of study. What point is Mandel making?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">9. On a related note, some characters—like Clark—believe in preserving and teaching about the time before the flu. But in Kirsten’s interview with François Diallo, we learn that there are entire towns that prefer not to: "We went to a place once where the children didn’t know the world had ever been different...." (page 115). What are the benefits of remembering, and of not remembering?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">10. What do you think happened during the year Kirsten can’t remember?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">11. In a letter to his childhood friend, Arthur writes that he’s been thinking about a quote from Yeats, "Love is like the lion’s tooth." (page 158). What does this mean, and why is he thinking about it?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">12. How does the impending publication of those letters affect Arthur?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">13. On page 206, Arthur remembers Miranda saying "I regret nothing," and uses that to deepen his understanding of Lear, "a man who regrets everything," as well as his own life. How do his regrets fit into the larger scope of the novel? Other than Miranda, are there other characters that refuse to regret?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">14. Throughout the novel, those who were alive during the time before the flu remember specific things about those days: the ease of electricity, the taste of an orange. In their place, what do you think you’d remember most?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">15. What do you imagine the Traveling Symphony will find when they reach the brightly lit town to the south?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">16. The novel ends with Clark, remembering the dinner party and imagining that somewhere in the world, ships are sailing. Why did Mandel choose to end the novel with him? <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">( //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Questions are issued by the publisher //<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">.)

= Related links = Interview with Emily St John Mandel:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/09/a-conversation-with-emily-st-john-mandel