Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

One snowy night Arthur Leander, a famous actor, has a heart attack onstage during a production of King Lear. Jeevan Chaudhary, a paparazzo-turned-EMT, is in the audience and leaps to his aid. A child actress named Kirsten Raymonde watches in horror as Jeevan performs CPR, pumping Arthur's chest as the curtain drops, but Arthur is dead. That same night, as Jeevan walks home from the theater, a terrible flu begins to spread. Hospitals are flooded and Jeevan and his brother barricade themselves inside an apartment, watching out the window as cars clog the highways, gunshots ring out, and life disintegrates around them.

Fifteen years later, Kirsten is an actress with the Traveling Symphony. Together, this small troupe moves between the settlements of an altered world, performing Shakespeare and music for scattered communities of survivors. Written on their caravan, and tattooed on Kirsten's arm is a line from Star Trek: "Because survival is insufficient." But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who digs graves for anyone who dares to leave.

Spanning decades, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, this suspenseful, elegiac novel is rife with beauty. As Arthur falls in and out of love, as Jeevan watches the newscasters say their final good-byes, and as Kirsten finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the prophet, we see the strange twists of fate that connect them all. A novel of art, memory, and ambition, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it. @goodreads

MY REVIEW:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1329056184              3 STARS 

I'm in the minority here. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. I thought it was okay. I only read it because of the high reviews, but my experience is to read something that sounds good to you and then if you don't like it that much you don't have to say.. I TOLD YOU SO..

It wasn't into the beginning of it, but I thought when the flu started killing people off that it was going to get really good, but it didn't go the way I was hoping. I'm not really sure what I was hoping for really.

I thought the idea of a traveling symphony going around after the collapse was very original. I give all of my stars to that, because it's just a really cool concept to me.

I didn't really relate to any of the characters. I know, what is wrong with me right? I think with the going back and forth with the time frame is what got to me. I like that thing in most books, but not so much this one.

Oh well, to each their own and I'm glad so many people could get more out of it than I did because that is what is so wonderful about reading :)