Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

69 reviews

kassidyreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Religious bigotry and Violence

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Death of parent, Medical content, Rape, and Suicide

amsswim's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I loved this book, wow. This is the 20th book I have read this year and my favorite one so far. A multiperspective book on a fast acting pandemic with time jumps before and after this apocalypse. That basic intro into the book alone would've had me by the chokehold, I knew it had to do with a post-apocalyptic society but nothing more. It was the little moments for me though, that really made this. WHile the plot overall I found very interesting, the environment and motivations were all very realistic to me which made the small moments in this world all the more meaningful. I must read from me!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Terminal illness, Grief, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Murder, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Suicide

Moderate: Death of parent, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Religious bigotry, Emotional abuse, and Pedophilia

Minor: Mental illness, Rape, and Sexual assault

tremayna's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic and Infidelity

Moderate: Violence, Domestic abuse, Classism, Grief, Kidnapping, Murder, Religious bigotry, Death, and Gun violence

Minor: Child death, Emotional abuse, Death of parent, Suicide, Confinement, Rape, Child abuse, Alcoholism, Medical content, and Pedophilia

Written before the 2020 pandemic, this book about a fictional global viral event was disorienting to read in the year 2023, so closely following the eerily parallel events that came to pass in real life. Much of the real life pandemic is still in progress; its effects continue to leave their mark; the process of compartmentalizing memories of things surreal and too big to process without a biweekly therapy plan is still happening. Picking up this book jolted me back into the thick of pandemic thinking, creating a literal sense of disorientation where I was looking around me wondering how people could be sitting so close, maskless, touching everything without thought, when I hadn't seen the world that way in at least a year and a half. For that reason alone, I have to commend the writing. And at the same time, the author's delicate touch and the many moments of human normalcy, in both pre-event and post-event scenes, prevented the complete despair that could have pervaded this story. I felt St John Mandel balanced total devastation with enough possibility to keep the reader believing in the likelihood of meaningful survival without overdoing it and allowing the story to devolve into purely a feel good fantasy.

Spoiler

My one remaining frustration by the end was how little of Jeevan's growth we got to see. It was thankfully alluded to in enough detail to let the reader form a picture. But as the first point of view character, he was the one that had my investment from the start, and I slightly resented Arthur's story for edging it out, especially since Jeevan's story could also have neatly covered Tyler and Elizabeth's character development.

kananineko's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Pandemic/Epidemic, Suicide, and Violence

Moderate: Pedophilia, Religious bigotry, Cursing, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Adult/minor relationship, and Blood

Minor: Alcohol, Drug use, Mental illness, Rape, and War

bookswithbethx's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Mental illness, Gun violence, Medical content, Pedophilia, Animal death, Blood, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Murder, Sexism, Sexual violence, Abandonment, Death, Pandemic/Epidemic, Child abuse, and Adult/minor relationship

spineofthesaurus's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Medical content, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Misogyny, Murder, Pandemic/Epidemic, Suicide, Blood, Kidnapping, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Ableism, Child death, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Trafficking, Abandonment, Alcohol, Animal death, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Alcoholism, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Infidelity, Sexual harassment, Slavery, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Physical abuse, Car accident, Pedophilia, Pregnancy, and Sexual violence

brindolyn's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Child abuse, Death, Adult/minor relationship, Gun violence, Infidelity, Medical content, and Murder

analenegrace's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I'd known of the HBO show but I hadn't ever watched it, and I'm glad I haven't. This book is so engaging, beautiful, and made me think so much about what makes humanity. 

It's simultaneously an easy read because of how well-written it is, but also so hard to read in a post-2020 world where COVID fundamentally changed so many things. So much of the book was familiar; Mandel has a keen understanding of how we as a society react to things. Some of the standouts include a dedication to theater and the arts, a dedication to preservation, and relying on religion to the point of madness. All of these things were seen in our pandemic as well as in this book. 

I cannot recommend it enough, and I will probably be thinking about it for a long time after reading. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child death, Death, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Alcohol, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Pandemic/Epidemic, Medical trauma, Murder, Religious bigotry, and Violence

musicalpopcorn's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

When a plague strikes the world, the people who survive are left to survive as best they can.

I quite enjoyed this book. Emily St John Mandel is fast becoming my favourite author. I like the way she weaves her stories and ties things together with neat but emotional little bows. I quite liked how this was a little different than a standard post-apocalyptic book in that it was based more on relationships and less on the nitty-gritty of survival. I also liked how there was a lot of speculation about how people would reminisce and find different memories of technology to fixate on. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Terminal illness, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Suicide, Gun violence, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Medical content, Blood, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, and Grief

Minor: Mental illness, Alcohol, Abandonment, Rape, Pedophilia, and Panic attacks/disorders

conspystery's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 “WHAT WAS LOST IN THE COLLAPSE: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.”

I cannot believe it took me as long as it did to discover this book; once I picked it up, I devoured it over the course of about four days, and now I am completely obsessed. I absolutely adore Station Eleven-- it’s everything its premise promises and more. 

The thing I enjoy most about this book is its depth, and its commitment to exploring that depth. I was introduced to Station Eleven by the HBO miniseries, and I loved it, so I thought I knew what to expect when I picked up the novel, but I didn’t. The miniseries is more straightforward and resolved than the book. It’s great, but after reading the novel, I kind of prefer the ambiguity-- how the characters are more morally gray, how their connections with each other are complicated, how nearly nothing is tied up neatly. A surprising amount of the book version of Station Eleven is left up to interpretation, and it serves the premise really well. 

I particularly like Jeevan in the book as opposed to the TV show (not to say I didn’t also love him in the miniseries! He was one of my absolute favorite characters!) because he’s such a great example of the difference in storytelling between the two formats. He tries to do the right thing, or that’s what he tells himself, but we see sides of him-- especially through other characters’ points of view, like Miranda-- that don’t completely line up with that image. The same can be said for nearly all the characters in the book. They’re complex, and Station Eleven centers itself around that complexity in how it presents its plot.

The writing of the book itself is also brilliant. Mandel’s writing style is unpretentious yet insightful (a friend described it as conversational); she knows exactly where to put detail so that it never becomes overbearing or repetitive. When there is focus on imagery, it’s always for a reason, and it’s always done with the wistful beauty of post-apocalyptic retrospection-- the recurring motif of light, especially around Kirsten’s character but sometimes with others, is my favorite instance of this intentionally limited, meaningful imagery. That philosophy of relative minimalism for maximum emotional impact does wonders for its thematic power.

In a similar vein, the matter-of-fact retrospective quality of the foreshadowing in this novel is exceptional. Again, Mandel does not overload the text with heavy-handed reminders of doom; the foreshadowing (or, after the outbreak, affirmations of the destruction) is limited, packed down into infrequent single sentences for maximum poignance. Even towards the beginning of the novel, while we’re still entrenched in the last days of normalcy before the outbreak hits, the foreshadowing is never meaninglessly ominous-- take the last line of chapter two, for example. Mandel’s foreshadowing always carries with it the sadness and regret of retrospection, which is a perfect match for the plot itself. 

I think I highlighted more quotes from this book than I have for any other book I’ve read in the past year, full stop. And even that can’t capture everything I love about it. The brief moments of humor caught me off-guard every time, in the best way. Chapter six is masterfully written, could be a poem on its own. Miranda’s function in the narrative and her depth as her own character is so sad yet unequivocally beautiful in its power, and I love how she has such presence over everything-- in the glass paperweight, especially, not to mention her graphic novel. The comic book’s recurring appearance as the audience is given more information to understand its connection to Miranda and Arthur is phenomenal. The recounting of Arthur’s last day-- and choosing to explore this as late into the book as it appears-- adds unmatched emotional resonance, especially with its last line. Honestly, just everything Arthur is and does is so interesting character-wise; the excerpts from the letters to V show it so well. There’s one paragraph-- “I want to do something remarkable but I don’t know what”-- that just hits so hard. “...we’re all getting older and it’s going so fast. I’m already 19.” SO good. I haven’t even written anything about Clark yet! He’s such a great foil for the other characters, in a really unexpected way! 

I think overall, Station Eleven shines in its ability to communicate so much depth in so many small, unexpected places. The less surface area an object has, the higher the pressure it can apply, and exponentially so-- this book is the same. It knows exactly where to pack its punches, and doing so results in a genuinely unforgettable, endlessly interpretable narrative, with a tragic but hopeful message about regret, human connection, and storytelling. I love this book; it’s a new favorite for me. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Terminal illness

Moderate: Violence, Death of parent, Adult/minor relationship, and Child death

Minor: Blood, Medical content, and Rape