#arthur leander dare i say character of all time

[newsfromthetimeloop]

the father

station eleven, wheel of fire /  mairead small staid, while playing hamlet at the national theatre, daniel day-lewis leaves the stage, having seen the ghost of his own father

[ifjanetranit]

I read a book, yo! Pretty sure I set a new record for the amount of time it took me to read a book. I think I bought Station Eleven as a Christmas gift for someone in 2015, kept it myself, and started reading it last summer. I only read the first few chapters before I got tied up with other library books with actual due dates. I picked it up again in January when I went on vacation, read a few more chapters, and put it aside when I returned home. I finally finished it this month during our trip to the beach.

So, does that mean the book sucked? No, I liked it. Sorta. I mean, I finished it, and I am not one of those people who can’t give up on a book. I will SO ditch a book if I don’t like it. But the characters weren’t particularly engaging, the reason for the loss of services like electricity was vague, and the Traveling Symphony felt like I should be studying them all for future essay questions. Overall it felt more like a homework assignment than a gripping read. Maybe I just don’t like dystopian fiction all that much. It was a relief when I was done. Did I say I liked it? Maybe I just like homework. I’m a dork.

Hope I get an A on the test despite the fact that I might have skimmed a few of the last chapters.  

From Amazon: 2014 National Book Award Finalist/A New York Times Bestseller 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.