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It’s no accident that Emily St. John Mandel opens her haunting new novel with a scene from King Lear, who ends up mad and blind but clear as a bell. One of that play’s memorable lines is: “The oldest hath borne most; we that are young/Shall never see so much nor live so long.��

Indeed, there is a divide between those who have borne much and those who will never see so much. In the opening pages, renowned actor Arthur Leander dies while performing King Lear. Before the week is out, the vast majority of the audience �� indeed, the world �� will be dead from the pandemic Georgia flu.

There are two key story lines �� one before the end of civilization and one after it. The first focuses on Arthur, along with his three ex-wives, best friend Clark, and Jeevan, a one-time paparazzo and good Samaritan, who tries to save him. The other line centers on Kirstin, a young girl who witnessed Arthur’s death, who is now part of a Traveling Symphony, a musical theatre troupe that roams the wasted land to bring music and Shakespeare to the limited number of people who remain…not unlike original Shakespeare actors during plague-filled days of the past.

Woven into these tales is the inspiration for the book’s title. Arthur’s first wife, Miranda (likely based on the character from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, who utters, “O brave new world, That has such people in’t!��) She is the writer and designer of a sci-fi graphic comic, with threads of what eventually happens on earth: “There are people who, after fifteen years of perpetual twilight, long only to go home, to return to Earth and beg for amnesty; to take their chances under alien rule. They live in the Undersea, an interlined network of vast fallout shelters under Station Eleven’s oceans.��

Station Eleven is a terrifying, haunting, and stunning book that speaks eloquently on many key themes: survival during devastating times, our ephemeral existence and the fleeting nature of fame compared to the endurance of art. Indeed, it is only our shared stories �� from Shakespeare to graphic books �� that ties us all together, connects us and makes us human.

After turning the last page, I sat completely still for a minute, stunned, before taking my dogs out. While outside, I was driven to tears by the beauty of the fireflies lighting up against a dark Chicago night. Station Eleven �� in many ways, a psalm of appreciation for the simple things in our current existence �� wields THAT sort of power. It’s an amazing book and is highly recommended.