#WAAAAUGGHHH ms. mandel always irrevocably changing my life....

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Olive Llewellyn says she doesn't want to write autobiographical novels but she's a character in one and the same. Emily St. John Mandel wrote Station Eleven in 2015 and five years later look what happened and then she wrote this. Olive wrote a novel about a pandemic and then nearly died in one and went on to write science fiction. Olive doesn't want to write autobiographically but she is WRITTEN so. every character in every book has something of the author in them, or at least I think so and it's how I myself write, but it's so so clear in this book who their author is. and she's so GENTLE about it!! invites the reader into her mindscape for a little while: all things are delicately interconnected. there is nothing new under the sun. they had light inside as well as cold, I've been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately. nothing happens the same way twice and everything balances on a needle's edge the way it is-was-has-is going to happen. we don't understand what or who strikes that balance, sets things in motion, opens that door to access the light. we don't know we're an autobiographical character in an author's story, or at least, can't fully comprehend that. sometimes it all leads back to an airport, for whatever reason. any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is NOT entirely coincidental. survival is insufficient. what if it's always the end of the world?