Book #2: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

When I hate a book, everyone knows it.  When I love one, everyone knows that, too.  I'm like a book evangelist, singing it praises wherever I go, trying my best to get everyone to read it.  When I finished Station Eleven, I texted three people (one of whom I knew had already downloaded the ebook) and bossed them to read it.

One of the reasons for this project is that, after spending three years in grad school, I had fallen out of the habit of reading for pleasure.  I was at a point where I had to force myself to read for a half-hour each evening before falling asleep which, if you know me, is pretty out of character.  Force-reading books leaves (even good ones) on a deadline leaves little time for fun reading, and it really is easy to break the habit.  In the last two years or so, there have been only two books that I loved.  Like, straight-up finished then turned the book over and started it again immediately: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker and 11/22/63 by Stephen King.  In the time between semesters that I had available to me, I often reread these two favorites, partly because I enjoyed them and partly because I knew I wasn't squandering my limited time on something disappointing.

Station Eleven hasn't reached The Age of Miracles status yet, but there's hope for it.  I think I will want to read it again soon, though I'll resist until 2016.  I struggle with this project, with wanting to get the books in - just about two per week! - and wanting to really relax and enjoy the books that are good.  This one both forced me to slow down and enjoy and went by incredibly quickly because I was always wanting to read - when I was trapped in the theater during Into the Woods, I was wishing I had brought Station Eleven along in my purse so I could sit in the lobby and read.  It took three days to read because it really was that readable.  

Mandel does something I envy, a skill I admire in every writer who does it because the thought of structuring a novel in such a way makes me hyperventilate a little: she tells her story out of chronological order, right up until the end, and it is flawless.  There is no connection left unexplained, no mystery left unraveled.  I had no idea that a book about the apocalypse, which spans about 60 years, could be so intriguing.  Typically these books follow a formula - the world ended, this is our life now, these are our struggles, this is our big conflict, check for the resolution in the sequel.  Mandel upends the traditional structure in favor of something more beautiful, something more meaningful. There is room for a sequel - I both hope she does write one and dread it, hating the ubiquitous agent-and-publisher-forced second parts that seem to creep up behind every well-written book anymore - but it's not necessary.  If the last word of Station Eleven is the last word I ever read about Kristen Raymonde then I am content.

She uses sentence fragments well - if my 9th graders read this they would grouse to me and I would tell them what an art teacher once told my skeptical 6th-grade class about Piet Mondrian and his black lines and blue squares: only when an artist understands the rules may he break them.  I blew the teacher off then, but I get it now after reading Faulkner and Joyce and Woolf.  I don't think Mandel's at that level yet, but she gets it, and maybe one day honors seniors will be reading her in English class.  I hope it's soon.