Spoiler free review of Station Elven, by Emily St John Mandel.

The Amazon blurb:

"An audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame, and ambition set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse.

DAY ONE
The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb.
News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%.

WEEK TWO
Civilization has crumbled.

YEAR TWENTY
A band of actors and musicians called the Travelling Symphony move through their territories performing concerts and Shakespeare to the settlements that have grown up there. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe.
But now a new danger looms, and he threatens the hopeful world every survivor has tried to rebuild. 

STATION ELEVEN
Moving backwards and forwards in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: famous actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan - warned about the flu just in time; Arthur's first wife Miranda; Arthur's oldest friend Clark; Kirsten, a young actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed 'prophet'. 

Thrilling, unique and deeply moving, this is a beautiful novel that asks questions about art and fame and about the relationships that sustain us through anything - even the end of the world."

This is the end of the world book I've been waiting for. I've spent most of the summer reading a variety of post-apocalyptic novels; only two detailed the world and people's lives prior to The End and this was one of them. I think everyone's capable of imagining what it would be like if a virus took hold or the dead started rising - we get enough of that through TV programs. But what we rarely get is what happens to people or towns when things start going bad - books and programs tend to start when The End has happened. Station Eleven beautifully weaves the narrative of the past with the present (the present being 20 years after The End) and delivers what The Girl with All the Gifts failed to. 

I know some people get turned off by science fiction; I'm not even sure this book falls into that category. It's not a fast-past, viral epidemic zombie affair, but it will make you think and possibly panic a little. It's subtle and sublime, and a beautiful read from start to finish. Without spoilers, the story revolves around the connections between a fifty-something actor and the people around him, before, during and after a virus sweeps through the global population. The narrative carefully flits between times to connect people back to the actor.

The future in Station Eleven isn't terribly bleak. There are no marauding hoards of flesh-eating monsters or crazed virus-ravaged people. Of course, there is a sense of lawlessness, and one would expect, but people have managed to find and simplistic beauty at the end of the world. 

The book is due out in under two weeks and I urge you to read it. I don't think you'll be disappointed. It's a wonderful look into humanity, which doesn't need blood, gore and a shotgun to deliver.