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I was utterly charmed by this book. I know that's a strange word to use about a post-apocalyptic tale, but the prose is so elegant, so lyrical, that "charming" is the work that springs to mind. The structure of the story is also unique. The story is very non-linear, switching back and forth between the before and after, and giving multiple points of view. The connections between these alternating views is hazy at first, but gradually the threads begin to tighten and the fabric of the story starts to come together.

Mandel starts off on the eve of the pandemic, with the world literally poised on the brink of destruction and just starting to tip over into that cataclysmic drop into technological darkness. The book opens on a stage in Toronto, in a performance of King Lear, headlined by the famous actor, Arthur Leander. We also meet Jeevan Chaudhry, the reporter turned paramedic who tries to save Arthur as he experiences a heart attack mid-performance, and a child actress, Kirsten Raymond, who watches in bewilderment and horror as the nice man who gave her some comic books dies right in front of her. The virus is introduced to us through a call Jeevan receives from a friend, an ER doctor, who warns him that the virus cannot be contained and to leave town. From that point, the story jumps twenty years into the future, and we're traveling with a band of performers called the Traveling Symphony. They go from settlement to settlement, performing concerts and, of all things, Shakespeare for the entertainment-deprived survivors of the flu. I have to tell you, that just made my little English-teacher's heart go pitty-pat! To think that when all of civilization comes crashing down, and people no longer have a screen in front of their face--what do they want to see? Do they want to see scenes from Twilight or Friends or Big Bang Theory acted out? No! They choose Shakespeare! Mandel is making the point that no matter what devastation man faces, he still has that hankering for art, for something beyond the immediate fulfillment of basic needs. That also happens to be the motto for this acting troupe: Because survival is insufficient. It's not enough just to live: we need something that feeds our souls as well as our bodies.

The story goes back and forth, from before the flu to after. The before follows Arthur Leander, either from his viewpoint or from someone connected to him. In the after sections, we know there is a Prophet, a leader of a cult that is, as they so often do, destroying those who disagree with their vision of how things should be. I spent quite some time, (view spoiler)[knowing that the Prophet was going to be someone connected to Arthur, trying to guess who it would turn out to be. (hide spoiler)] I did guess before his actual identity was revealed, but not before it was pretty obvious. Threaded through all this are the comic books about Station Eleven, a sci-fi comic created by Arthur's first wife, about a space station. This is yet another thing that will eventually draw this disparate group of characters together.

Jumping twenty years into the future, twenty years after the flu, and the hysteria, has swept the world, allows us to get beyond the initial chaos of watching the huge machinery of civilization shuddering to an abrupt, screeching halt. It is time for people to have adjusted to this new reality, time for them to finish mourning what they have lost and begin thinking about what they actually have. It is time for them to have begun building a new routine into their lives. The Traveling Symphony has done this. They have an established route, and their appearance has become a routine for those they visit. The Prophet disrupts this, and it is from this that the tension in the story builds.

I really found the back and forth fascinating in this story. We got quite a good look at the unfolding of the apocalypse, as services shut down and all of the luxuries of our modern lives that we barely notice were suddenly no longer available. It wasn't a gradual loss--it was sudden and shocking. Suddenly, there was no transportation. Suddenly, there was no electricity. Suddenly, there was no running water. They didn't all go away at the same time, but they all eventually went. Mandel spends one short chapter at the beginning musing over some of the things that were lost:

No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. . . . no more films . . . no more pharmaceuticals . . . and the list goes on.

I don't know why examining in detail the hypothetical demise of our civilization is so interesting to me, and I daresay it means that I am freakishly morbid or some such thing, but--I am what I am. If you, too, enjoy books that examine the end of life as we know it, if you enjoy speculating about what it would be like to have everything we're accustomed to stripped away from us, forcing us to eke out an existence as our ancient forebears did, with little more than our two hands, then I highly recommend this. This one has the added benefit of being extremely well-written.

4.5 stars.