Station Eleven
Emily St. John Mandel
This is a wonderfully strange, somewhat SF, pretty dystopian, near future novel that’s also about the nature of love, what it means to be a family, and how to stay human, and creative, in a word stacked against you. I loved this book. Science fiction type books that deal with humanities’ struggle to survive a major disaster are generally a sure bet with me, but here, Mandel takes the conceit to a new level of prose sophistication. As far as I know Mandel doesn’t have an MFA, but this book reads like she does. Its prose is polished and sophisticated, its characters are wonderfully particularized, and its plot, while perhaps not really “page turner” is involving and complex. Probably the best fiction book I read all year.

Recommended.