Station Eleven, written by Emily St. John Mandel (Vintage 2015), is spellbinding. The plot revolves around several apparently unconnected groups of survivors, as well as celebrities living before the outbreak of the so-called Georgia Flu. Daring and talented musician-survivors travel around the Great Lakes region and perform Shakespearean plays at various outposts. Mandel skillfully illuminates the personalities of every character in a nuanced manner, and lets the reader make connections, without needing to state the obvious. For instance, when Mandel details the life stories of two seemingly unrelated survivors, she lets the reader figure out their actual relations to each other prior to the outbreak.

The novel is as much a mystery as it is a post-apocalyptic tale. The author cleverly plants clues and hints as the plot progresses and keeps the reader in suspense. The Prophet, an evil cult leader, owns a dog with the same name as a character in a comic book, written by a famous actor's former wife. The Prophet, it turns out, is the actor’s child. Unexpected connections like these reveal how characters’ pasts, like pieces of a puzzle, interconnect. The reader soon discovers that these stories of interconnection revolve around Arthur Leander, a famous Hollywood actor who, prior to the outbreak, died right on a theater stage. The scene is a metaphor for social ills in the pre-apocalypse, when people were too obsessed with their images in social media. Back then, life was theater, not reality, and Leander embodies this culture of narcissism. As every connection to Leander is revealed, the reader is excited to see how the identities of the main characters will entwine with one another.

The novel has one downside though: it does not do enough to show the frustrations that Flu survivors must have faced. For example, when civilization collapses, access to necessities such as water, food, medicine, and shelter must be limited; and there must be some social tension as a result of looming scarcity. In Mandel’s rendering people, for the most part, seem to get along just fine. They never have trouble finding water or food, and they do not worry about sanitation. Even though challenges of this nature are briefly alluded to, this reader did not get a true sense of the powerlessness and defenselessness that people faced. Such critical details would have helped illuminate the true life-and-death circumstances that a tragic pandemic would have certainly unleashed. Yet the book’s exceptionally rendered contrast—between a former paparazzi-driven world and a very real post-apocalyptic one—makes it a highly absorbing read. The post-apocalypse reveals a side of people that is sadly dormant in their pre-apocalypse selves: a primal urge to connect as humans, and not in terms of a celebrity ideal. As a reader, I can relate to the moral of this story. Our preoccupations as modern beings, with all of our grief about social media and self-image, are trivial when compared to a basic need for human connection in a post-apocalyptic world.