Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven opens with the heart attack on stage of a famous actor and the futile attempts of a paramedic student to save him. Later that night the paramedic receives a phone call from a doctor friend, telling him that a quick-acting super flu has hit the city. Holed up with his wheelchair-bound brother in an apartment, the young man soon realizes that it is the "end of the world as we know it."

Fast-forward to 20 years later, and a girl who was present as a child performer on the night of the actor's death is traveling from village to village with an itinerant group of actors and musicians, providing entertainment for the scattered survivors of the plague. She carries with her two graphic science fiction novels (which had been given to her by the dead actor) about a space station long lost from Earth, called Station Eleven.

Jumping from character to character and backwards and forwards in time, Mandel tells these seemingly disparate stories, and more, before connecting them all together in a most clever fashion.

If this is to be classed an an apocalyptic tale, it is certainly the most hopeful and heart warming of that genre. Perhaps by setting the action 20 years after the event, Mandel has avoided the horrors and brutality which are central to most of the ilk, such as The Road, for example. One of her characters cannot even recall the first year after the epidemic, apparently shutting it out as too traumatic to remember. Mandel's story allows us to believe that most people are good and that they value what is best and brightest about civilization. The motto of the entertainment group is "Survival is insufficient," taken from an episode of Star Trek, Voyager. This phrase places the novel as one of rebuilding rather than of survival. It is comforting to believe that in the event of world collapse, the good would be preserved and the bad would be defeated.

Mandel's only failure here is in the treatment of her characters. Only the dead actor is examined enough to seem real, as the story of his life is told in flashback. The rest of the characters seem to be placeholders for "types," making the novel seem almost allegorical. But perhaps that is as she intended.

This is certainly one of the most compelling of the 2014 crop of fiction. It was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pen/Faulkner Award. At this time, it remains to be seen how it will fare in the Pulitzer race; it is certainly a strong contender. Highly recommended.