By Emily St John Mandel
I got this book in 2022 and attempted it once, before picking it up again in late September of 2023, reading it across a couple of commutes.
This was three years after COVID, and yet the story of the devastating plague and the utter collapse of civilisation that followed was harrowing and trauma-ridden, while maintaining a wonderful love of art in all circumstances.
It recalled Cloud Atlas with its depth of connections surrounding the actor Arthur Leander, his wives, the kid he worked with, a paparazzo-who-photographed-him-subsequently-turned-medic who tried to save his life.
The fictional graphic novel in the book, Station Eleven was so wonderfully described I wanted a copy for myself, to see the isolated moon covered in dark seas in ink and pencil.
Wonderfully crafted characters and an intelligent and imaginative vision of life twenty years after total civilisational collapse. A brilliant book.