Shelf Control – March 17, 2016

Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.  Consider this a variation of a Wishing & Waiting post… but looking at books already available.  Take a look at your shelves and/or Kindle and post about a book you own but haven’t read yet.

Title: Station Eleven
Author:  Emily St. John Mandel
Published: Published January 1st 2015 by Picador (first published January 1st 2014)
Length: 339 Pages

Goodreads Summary: 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.

How I Got It: I bought the UK paperback from Book Depository

When I Got It: Early 2015

Why I Want To Read It: From the moment I saw the US cover, I knew I wanted to read this book.  And when I read the description, I wanted to read it even more.  I bought the UK paperback from Book Depository because it was a lot cheaper than the US copy so while I don’t have the cover that I want, the words are still the same.  Not sure why I’ve been putting off reading it though.

Here is the US cover (which if I like the book, I would definitely like to re-purchase it with this cover):

Isn’t it gorgeous?!