Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Reviewed by Jeanne

I’d had this book recommended to me several times but hadn’t gotten around to reading it.  When I ended up with a Book Bingo square requiring me to read a science fiction book, I gave in and picked it up. 

While this is indeed a beautifully written, thought provoking book, populated with complex and interesting characters, it is set in the aftermath of a global pandemic which has wiped out most of the human population.  That’s not the most comfortable read these days, and I found myself chilled reading the litany of things that ended, things that we have experienced (end of waving lights at concerts, end of swimming in community pools, end of going to movies) and things we haven’t and hopefully won’t: no electricity, communication, mail, antibiotics, and vaccines.  You can no longer take for granted that a cut won’t be fatal, Mandel tells us, or that you’ll ever see loved ones again in this life. 

As I said, not an easy read these days.

On the other hand, the characters pull you along as does Mandel’s meticulous interweaving of lives.  The book opens with a young man named Jeevan and his girlfriend attending a Shakespeare play.  Arthur Leander, a fading movie star, has the lead role of Lear when he suffers a fatal heart attack on stage.  Jeevan has been training as a paramedic, and he leaps on stage to try to help.  A frightened child actress cries, bewildered. As the crowd disperses, Jeevan learns from a friend who works in an ER that a terrifying epidemic has come to town via a passenger from an airplane: victims become ill and die within 48 hours and the virus is spreading like wildfire.  Jeevan goes to a store and begins buying supplies—including toilet paper, I must add.

Twenty years later, a woman is part of a traveling artistic troop that moves from settlement to settlement, performing Shakespeare plays and music.  She’s Kirsten, the child from the stage, and Arthur’s death was a pivotal moment in her life. She carries two comic books that Arthur gave her, strange books that no one else has ever heard of, and she searches everywhere they go to try to uncover more information.

The story flashes back and forth in time, introducing us to the young Arthur and to his wives—there will be three in all—and how his life and their relationships  have influenced the future.  It’s a tribute to Mandel’s writing ability that Arthur becomes a fully developed character, not a caricature of a shallow, philandering Hollywood actor.  He makes some bad choices, but he is basically a decent fellow.  His friend Clark thinks that the one word always associated with him is “kind.”

And in a way, that seems to be the heart of the story.  Most of the characters, at least the ones we follow, are kind, decent people. They are sometimes forced to do terrible things but they act for the good of friends and family, not just selfishness.  They give me hope for humanity.

Mandel glosses over the first years after the pandemic.  Most of the characters are too traumatized by what they have seen, and possibly done, that they’ve wiped it from their minds.  They’re focused on the now and a bit on the future.

Part of the fun for me was figuring out how the people we meet in the pre-epidemic times fit into the post-pandemic world. Sometimes it’s an action that lives on; sometimes it’s the person him or herself. I found myself guessing where things came from or if something would turn up again.  I was right sometimes and wrong sometimes, but I was always entertained.

I think it comes down to the fact that, ultimately, this is a hopeful book.  Hopeful that good people prevail, hopeful that life can continue, hopeful that art can sustain, just as it has through the centuries.  Several times it is pointed out that Shakespeare wrote during a time of plague; that people need poetry, drama, music, and visual art, even in the direst of times.

I’m glad I read this book. 

Nevermore: Yann Martel, Frank Delaney, Rebecca Kauffman, Tracy Chevalier, Margaret Atwood

Reported by Ambrea

Nevermore had some great books to share, including one reader’s favorite book:  The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel.  Martel, author of The Life of Pi, creates a moving epic in his latest novel, which follows the lives of a young man on a mission to redefine history, a Portuguese pathologist, and a Canadian senator returning to his ancestral home.  It begins in Lisbon in 1904 with a journal and a dream, before culminating in a century-long quest that leads readers in an unexpected direction.  Our reader said she absolutely loved this book.  She said, “[It has] parts to make you laugh; parts to make you cry.”  It has everything for readers, she continued, and it has an underlying theology—a universal idea of God—that she found fascinating.  Our reader, who admitted she read The High Mountains of Portugal four times, always found new things to appreciate and enjoy each time she read it.  She highly recommended it to our other Nevermore members.

Next, Nevermore looked at Tipperary by Frank Delaney.  Charles O’Brien is a healer, a traveling doctor who ventures all along the countryside and beyond to dispense traditional cures and help heal a variety of ailments, maladies, and wounds; however, he becomes an unlikely storyteller when he unwittingly soaks up the tales of his homeland.  Then, at forty, when he is summoned to Paris to treat one of his dying countrymen—Oscar Wilde, no less—he falls in love with April Burke, who doesn’t return his affection.  Determined to win her over, Charles sets out to preserve Tipperary, an abandoned estate in Ireland, and win April’s favor.  Our reader, who enjoyed reading Delaney’s Ireland, said she was a little disappointed with Tipperary.  Charles is an excellent storyteller, but, when other narratives were sewn into the story, our reader pointed out that she didn’t like the anonymity given to other characters.  It made Tipperary challenging, because she was never sure whose narrative she was reading, and, ultimately, unrewarding.

In Another Place You’ve Never Been by Rebecca Kauffman, Nevermore was introduced to Tracy, a woman who aspires to something greater than her work as a restaurant hostess in Buffalo, New York.  However, rather than following Tracy as she works to cultivate her creative talents, Kauffman looks to the peripheral characters—people who have known Tracy, people whose lives intersect hers—and interweaves their stories to create a fascinating narrative tapestry of lives, hopes, dreams, and experiences.  Although our reader said Tracy was a memorable heroine, both dynamic and fascinating, she thought Kauffman’s novel was a little bland.  She found Another Place You’ve Never Been just didn’t stir as much of an emotional response for her and she didn’t really recommend it to her fellow Nevermore readers.

Nevermore also shared Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring and At the Edge of the Orchard.  On the coast of England, Mary Anning discovers a series of unusual fossils buried in the cliffs near her home and sets tongues to wagging.  Not only do the townspeople have something new about which to gossip, the scientific community is absolutely voracious to learn more about these fossils—even if they are set to disregard Mary entirely.  But Mary gains an unlikely friend and champion in Elizabeth Philpot, a spinster who shares her passion for scouring beaches and has her own fascination with fossils.  Our reader enjoyed reading Chevalier’s novel, saying it was a fascinating look at women and their impact on early scientific discoveries.  Moreover, she said, “The characters are great; the scenes are great.”  She appreciated Chevalier’s eye for detail and her ability to make sifting through sand in search of fossils a fascinating experience.

Next, Nevermore visited another reader favorite:  Moral Disorder, a series of eleven stories by Margaret Atwood that follows the life of one remarkable young girl as she traverses her childhood in the 1930s and beyond.  According to the jacket cover, “Each story focuses on the ways relationships transform a life:  a woman’s complex love for a married man, the grief upon the death of parents and the joy with the birth of children, and the realization of what growing old with someone you love really means.”  It’s a fascinating, funny but poignant collection of stories that our reader termed as “wonderful.”   Our reader is a big fan of Atwood—and Moral Disorder is one of her favorites.  She enjoys it each and every time she reads it, because she likes the complexity of the characters, including the narrator, and the subtle traces of humor and humanity throughout it.

Last, but not least, Nevermore took another look at Margaret Atwood’s work with her latest novel, Hag-Seed.  A reimagining of William Shakespeare’s Tempest, Hag-Seed is a curious novel that follows the rise and fall of Felix, a former Artistic Director for the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival, as he puts on the finest show of his life—and plots revenge against those who betrayed him.  Our reader said she really liked Atwood’s novel, noting that it read like a mystery story and a very good one at that.  Our reader also took a special interest in Atwood’s bibliography, which listed many of the books and movies and plays watched by the author in preparation for Hag-Seed.  As the latest installment of the Hogarth Shakespeare Project, Hag-Seed joins The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson, Shylock is My Name by Howard Jacobson, and Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler.

Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson

Reviewed by Ambrea

The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson retells one of Shakespeare’s classic plays, The Winter’s Tale, and transports readers from the mythical coast of Bohemia to the sprawling modern metropolis of London.  The year is 2008, Leo and his beloved wife, Hermione (MiMi), are happily married and set to welcome their new baby into the world—except Leo isn’t so happy, and he doesn’t believe this baby belongs to him.  In fact, he’s dead set against raising a child that he believes belongs to his traitorous best friend.

Meanwhile, after the dust settles and Leo’s duplicity tears apart his life, Shep and his son, Clo, discover a tiny baby named Perdita left out in the rain.  Making a spur-of-the-moment decision, Shep decides to adopt her into the family—and his choice will forever change the course of their lives as young Perdita grows and learns of her startlingly tragic heritage.

The Gap of Time was an intriguing novel.  Part tragedy, part redemption, The Gap of Time does a fair job of transporting Shakespeare’s play to the modern era.  It conveys all the conflict, all the tragedy and love and joy and hurt of The Winter’s Tale, but it also gives his iconic characters a little more color, a little more depth, which I enjoyed.  And, speaking of characters, I really want to mention Shep.

Aside from Autolycus, who is basically a crooked car salesman with a heart of gold, Shep is probably my favorite character.  He has this gentle, genuine quality to him that I appreciated the more I got to know him (and other characters), and he has such a wonderful narrative.  For instance, in the first chapter (if it can be called a chapter), Shep details the tragedies that have beset him and he tells readers how he happened across Perdita.  Yes, I found his thoughts were rather tangled up with the past, caught up in the regrets that plague him and the memories that haven’t quite settled; however, his narrative is heavy with emotion and purpose.  It has a lyrical quality to it that makes his words sound absolutely beautiful.

I loved the way he describes his first encounter with Perdita, how he describes his out of body experience of finding the baby and knowing, just knowing she was in his life for good:  “I realise without realising that I’ve got the tyre lever in my hand.  I move without moving to prise open the hatch.  It is easy.  I lift out the baby and she’s as light as a star.”

Or when Shep decided, in one moment the importance of this child in his life—and recognized the impact of important moments:

“The cars come and the cars go between me and my crossing the street.  The anonymous always-in-motion world.  The baby and I stand still, and it’s as if she knows that a choice has to be made. 

“Or does it?  The important things happen by chance.  Only the rest gets planned. 

“I walked round the block thinking I’d think about it, but my legs were heading home, and sometimes you have to accept that your heart knows what to do.”

His lines are, by far, the best found in the book.

On the opposite side of the spectrum is Leo, Perdita’s biological father.  Personally, I hated—yes, hated—Leo.  Leo never seems to understand what he did wrong.  I mean, sure he’s remorseful for his actions after they destroy the lives of so many (his wife, his daughter, his best friend, his son, and his own), but, even after the nuclear fallout has settled, he doesn’t quite seem to grasp that his actions—his jealousy, his vindictive attitude, his sense of superiority, his abject cruelty—is what drove everyone he loved away and resulted in so many heavy casualties.

At the end, he’s not the lion of a man he was at one time; however, he doesn’t seem to have learned much of anything either.  Maybe, I don’t understand his humor (his racist/anti-semitic playfulness that Pauline merely ignores or his complicated almost cruel relationship with Xeno); maybe, I don’t understand him, period.  Either way, I feel like Leo just didn’t develop as a character and he didn’t learn from his mistakes.  He was too stubborn to accept Perdita as his daughter, too jealous to accept that his wife wasn’t sleeping with his best friend, and simply too cruel.  I mean, he doesn’t even bother to contact his wife—the woman he supposedly loves beyond comprehension—after their world is torn asunder and he doesn’t bother to seek out his daughter, if he ever even accepts that she’s his.

I much preferred Shep.  Like Leo, Shep is grieving and hurt by the “anonymous always-in-motion world,” but he doesn’t let it hollow him out, turn him into a raving madman or a violent, vindictive father.  He lets Perdita into his life, unlike Leo, and he lets love back into his life.  He doesn’t cast it aside, and he doesn’t try to ruin lives because he’s hurt.  He makes an effort to change his life; he makes an effort to be kind.  I can’t help thinking Perdita got a much better deal when she wound up in his care.

Additionally, I feel like I should point out that I didn’t really understand The Gap of Time.  It just didn’t strike the right note with me, so to speak, and it didn’t appeal to me on an emotional level, because I didn’t understand the characters—that is, I couldn’t connect with them.  Much of Winterson’s novel is told in this odd, almost meandering verse that is part omniscient, omnipresent narration and part stream-of-consciousness monologuing.

It actually reminded me a lot of The Sound in the Fury, in that I didn’t quite understand it either.  Not only does it hopscotch through time, it utilizes a style of writing that makes it difficult to read.  It feels scattered, unhinged, especially when Leo is involved.  I couldn’t stand when Leo was involved, I couldn’t stand his jealous rantings or his madman-like ravings.  It made the story difficult to stomach and altogether too brutal.

Overall, I had a hard time understanding and connecting to Winterson’s novel.  It made me squirm, but it didn’t make me think.  It made me feel sympathy for Perdita, for Hermione (MiMi) and their shared plight, but it didn’t make me feel sorry that Perdita was ripped from her home and given a parent who loved her with the unbounded, unconditional love that a parent feels for their offspring.

It made me feel revulsion, but it didn’t make me feel joy, which I found very disappointing.

(Note:  This is another of the Hogarth Shakespeare books which has contemporary authors re-imagining the plays.)

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

 Reviewed by Ambrea

Kate Battista feels stuck.  Having dropped out of college, after a heated altercation with one of her professors, Kate has taken to overseeing her eccentric father’s home, babysitting her air-headed younger sister, Bunny, and working at a local preschool to help make ends meet.  Despite her best intentions, she always seems to land herself in trouble.  If it isn’t Bunny bringing boys home or her father forgetting his lunch (again), then she’s being called into her supervisor’s office because the parents don’t care for Kate’s unfettered cynicism or her blunt-edged honesty.

And then, quite suddenly, her father drops a bombshell:  his lab assistant, Pyotr, is on the verge of being deported, putting their entire project in peril—unless Kate can find it in her heart to help them.  Kate, however, wants nothing to do with their cockamamie plan to keep Pyotr in the states; in fact, she’s furious they would ever consider having her marry a complete and utter stranger.  But, as Pyotr and her father try to bring her around, Kate finds herself thawing just a little more each day and thinking, maybe…just maybe, their plan might work after all.

Vinegar Girl, a reimagined version of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, is an interesting novel, to say the least.  A little odd, yes, but it was strangely compelling.  I couldn’t help getting wound up in Kate Battista’s life, couldn’t help wondering what would happen as she struggles to deal with her wild child sister, tries to corral her father’s mismanagement, and fend off Pyotr’s unexpected affection.  I was somehow hooked by her story, and I found that I simply couldn’t put this book down.

I’ve never read anything by Anne Tyler and, oddly enough, I’ve never had the opportunity to read (but I have seen) The Taming of the Shrew.  Despite my lack of exposure to both writer and inspiration, I thoroughly enjoyed Vinegar Girl.  First off, I feel like I should note that Tyler is a wonderful writer.  There’s a quality to her work that drew me in from the first page, a cadence to the narration that made the story appealing on a visceral level, a way the characters were made that kept me coming back for more.  I grew to appreciate the plot, the characters, the subtle shifts in language as Kate changed her mind and new layers were added to her relationship with Pyotr.  Personally, I enjoyed the journey.

Moreover, Tyler is a descriptive writer.

As a reader, I hate when authors don’t set the stage, when they don’t offer descriptions of their characters or give weak descriptions about the scene.  Tyler, however, does a wonderful job of bringing her characters to life, showing off the little details that make them unique and, confidentially, intriguing, and unfolding an entire world on the pages.  She helps me sink into the story, helps me feel like I’m really there with Kate as she weeds her garden or as she walks the few blocks to her father’s lab because he forgot his lunch (again) or fights with Bunny over the boy she wasn’t supposed to bring into the house (again).

Plus, I found Kate to be singularly enjoyable.  She’s headstrong, she’s fiery, she’s brutally honest and blunt even when speaking to small children, and she’s incredibly intelligent.  Tyler crafts a compelling and sympathetic character in Kate, creating a complex female heroine who is pulled in many different directions by her loyalty to her family, her interests in her own career, her dreams for herself and her own indomitable sense of independence.  She’s frequently sharp and a bit caustic, but her prickly personality is simply part of her appeal.

Some part of me did wish for more and for better opportunities for Kate Battista.  I wished she wasn’t so constricted by her family, confined by their subsequent eccentricities and individual challenges—that she wasn’t thrown into such an awkward situation with Pyotr.  It just seems like she sacrifices so much for her family, for the people she loves and, honestly, it feels a bit unfair to her.  But, I suppose, if she’s happy with how things turned out, who am I to judge?

Note:  This is one in a series of books by famous authors who are presenting fresh versions of various Shakespeare plays. The Hogarth Shakespeare series will include Jo Nesbo's version of Macbeth, Gillian Flynn's retelling of Hamlet,  and Margaret Atwood will retell The Tempest.