{"id":2935,"date":"2020-06-06T17:10:18","date_gmt":"2020-06-07T01:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2935"},"modified":"2020-06-06T17:10:19","modified_gmt":"2020-06-07T01:10:19","slug":"review-station-eleven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2935","title":{"rendered":"Review: Station Eleven"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Station Eleven<\/em> comes with an excellent pedigree.  Emily St. John Mandel&#8217;s novel was nominated for many awards &#8211; winning several &#8211; and got a shout out from the folks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketplace.org\/shows\/make-me-smart-with-kai-and-molly\/\">Make Me Smart<\/a>.  It&#8217;s partially based in a post-pandemic world, which resonates with the current times pretty strongly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even without the timely topical resonances, it&#8217;s quite a good book. She&#8217;s written a nice combination of plot-driven mystery in the vein of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crash_(2004_film)\"><em>Crash<\/em><\/a> or <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Magnolia_(film)\">Magnolia<\/a><\/em>, post-apocalyptic page turner, celebrity send-up, and meditation on the role of art in societies both pre- and post-industrial.  That&#8217;s a lot of balls to keep up in the air, and she does it with brio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The structure is impeccable and the writing is quite lively.  There&#8217;s a lot to like here, but beyond the resonances with my current safer-at-home perspective, it never caught fire for me.  That&#8217;s strange and frustrating for me to conclude.  Analytically, I can point at a lot of great features of this book, but nothing brought it alive for me.  I guess I chalk it up to the magic of art.  If it does sound like something you&#8217;d life, do give it a try.  As I say, I think it&#8217;s very well done.  It may pop for you in a way it did not for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Station Eleven comes with an excellent pedigree. Emily St. John Mandel&#8217;s novel was nominated for many awards &#8211; winning several &#8211; and got a shout out from the folks at Make Me Smart. It&#8217;s partially based in a post-pandemic world, which resonates with the current times pretty strongly. Even without the timely topical resonances, it&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2935"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2937,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2935\/revisions\/2937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}