Perhaps not the best book to read this year, since some of its setting deals with the aftermath of a deadly flu-like pandemic which has killed as much as 99% of the world's population. However, this Arthur C. Clarke Award winner is more than a simple post-apocalyptic novel.
The central figure of the book, though not the main protagonist, is the Hollywood actor Arthur Leander, who dies on stage of a heart attack while playing King Lear in Toronto on the same night the virus arrives in North America. The story flits back and forth in time along his life and that of various people who knew and interacted with him -- his best friend, Clark; his first wife, Miranda; Jeevan, a would-be medic who rushes on stage to try and resuscitate Arthur; a child, Kristen, who plays one of Lear’s daughters in a kind of memory-dream prologue of the play; and Tyler, Arthur's only child by his second wife.
Some of these survive, including Kirsten, who becomes a leading member of The Travelling Symphony, an acting and orchestral troupe which tours among the tiny settlements which have grown up in the Great Lakes area of North America in the twenty years since the pandemic, bringing music and Shakespeare to the people. In fact, much the same kind of touring group to which Shakespeare himself would have belonged when the plague shut the London theatres. The troupe's motto -- and the theme of the book -- is a line from Star Trek Voyager: "Survival is insufficient".
The plot, what there is of it, revolves around a self-styled prophet who has effectively taken over a settlement with the usual accoutrements -- a plethora of weapons, a cohort of inadequates who believe themselves to have been saved because they're special, and the girls and young women whom he takes to wife regardless of consent or age. Two members of the troupe who had stayed behind in the settlement a couple of years before are no longer there, and the TS, recognising the danger the prophet poses to them all, quickly follow their escape path, heading for a rumoured town -- and Museum of Civilization -- at a former airport. As might be expected, getting there isn't as simple as they hoped.
The plot, though, is of less importance than the connections between the characters, and in particular two graphic novels Miranda creates called Dr. Eleven, copies of which she gives to Arthur some weeks before his death and which he then gives to Kirsten and Tyler, with ramifications for both. The setting of the two novels is a space station -- Station Eleven -- formed to be a simulacrum of a planet but which, after Earth has been taken over by aliens, has been damaged so it no longer has daylight. Part of its population, those who live in the undersea, want to force a return to Earth despite the risks as they're sick of living in twilight and darkness, and the eponymous Dr. Eleven has to lead the station after his predecessor is murdered. The novels and their setting are repeatedly invoked, both as they're written/drawn by Miranda in the past, using places in her life with Arthur as backdrops, and as they're read by others and repeatedly re-read by Kirsten, and they act as both counterpoint and commentary on the characters and how people are torn between continuing in a new life without reference to the past on the one hand and needing to return to the old world on the other.
Time blurs as the story is told, with jumps back and forth between the various periods of the book, with the shifting use of past and present tense, and with sentences such as "He saw [her] across the stage again -- already in the final week of her life, the Georgia Flu so close now --" but any confusions as to when and where are few and far between. The writing is limpid, with a poetic feel, and for the most part characterisation is strong. The main criticism I have of the novel is that for me the structure is too neat, with all the meetings and connections between the characters -- to my mind the story has been imposed on the characters, instead of arising from the characters.
But that's a minor quibble for an excellent read that deals with regret and ambition, hopes and dreams, memory and the wish to be remembered, and which reminds us of the importance of culture in our lives, and of Shakespeare most especially, even when there isn't a pandemic threatening us all.
The central figure of the book, though not the main protagonist, is the Hollywood actor Arthur Leander, who dies on stage of a heart attack while playing King Lear in Toronto on the same night the virus arrives in North America. The story flits back and forth in time along his life and that of various people who knew and interacted with him -- his best friend, Clark; his first wife, Miranda; Jeevan, a would-be medic who rushes on stage to try and resuscitate Arthur; a child, Kristen, who plays one of Lear’s daughters in a kind of memory-dream prologue of the play; and Tyler, Arthur's only child by his second wife.
Some of these survive, including Kirsten, who becomes a leading member of The Travelling Symphony, an acting and orchestral troupe which tours among the tiny settlements which have grown up in the Great Lakes area of North America in the twenty years since the pandemic, bringing music and Shakespeare to the people. In fact, much the same kind of touring group to which Shakespeare himself would have belonged when the plague shut the London theatres. The troupe's motto -- and the theme of the book -- is a line from Star Trek Voyager: "Survival is insufficient".
The plot, what there is of it, revolves around a self-styled prophet who has effectively taken over a settlement with the usual accoutrements -- a plethora of weapons, a cohort of inadequates who believe themselves to have been saved because they're special, and the girls and young women whom he takes to wife regardless of consent or age. Two members of the troupe who had stayed behind in the settlement a couple of years before are no longer there, and the TS, recognising the danger the prophet poses to them all, quickly follow their escape path, heading for a rumoured town -- and Museum of Civilization -- at a former airport. As might be expected, getting there isn't as simple as they hoped.
The plot, though, is of less importance than the connections between the characters, and in particular two graphic novels Miranda creates called Dr. Eleven, copies of which she gives to Arthur some weeks before his death and which he then gives to Kirsten and Tyler, with ramifications for both. The setting of the two novels is a space station -- Station Eleven -- formed to be a simulacrum of a planet but which, after Earth has been taken over by aliens, has been damaged so it no longer has daylight. Part of its population, those who live in the undersea, want to force a return to Earth despite the risks as they're sick of living in twilight and darkness, and the eponymous Dr. Eleven has to lead the station after his predecessor is murdered. The novels and their setting are repeatedly invoked, both as they're written/drawn by Miranda in the past, using places in her life with Arthur as backdrops, and as they're read by others and repeatedly re-read by Kirsten, and they act as both counterpoint and commentary on the characters and how people are torn between continuing in a new life without reference to the past on the one hand and needing to return to the old world on the other.
Time blurs as the story is told, with jumps back and forth between the various periods of the book, with the shifting use of past and present tense, and with sentences such as "He saw [her] across the stage again -- already in the final week of her life, the Georgia Flu so close now --" but any confusions as to when and where are few and far between. The writing is limpid, with a poetic feel, and for the most part characterisation is strong. The main criticism I have of the novel is that for me the structure is too neat, with all the meetings and connections between the characters -- to my mind the story has been imposed on the characters, instead of arising from the characters.
But that's a minor quibble for an excellent read that deals with regret and ambition, hopes and dreams, memory and the wish to be remembered, and which reminds us of the importance of culture in our lives, and of Shakespeare most especially, even when there isn't a pandemic threatening us all.
