I have reviewed a few "COVID" novels, novels written during the pandemic or at least thematically related to the pandemic, for example, Orhan Pamuk's Nights of Plague and Jonathan Lethem's The Arrest. What sets Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven apart is that it was written in 2014 several years before the actual COVID outbreak. The novel is set in the dystopian aftermath of a pandemic that suddenly arose and wiped out 99% of the world's population in a very short time. Although somewhat familiar now in its depiction of a wasteland of decayed civilization populated by a ragtag set of survivors, the novel is saved from cliche in the way it intertwines the past (pre-pandemic) and present (pandemic aftermath) in an interesting narrative structure. Several characters, in particular, Arthur Leander, a professional actor who died on the eve of the start of the pandemic, and his daughter Kirsten, who was 8 years old at the time. Set in "year 20" of the new "order", the most poignant aspect of the book is the complex role of memory of "how things were" which makes the idealized past so sweet and the present both depressing but in a way bearable. The novel was serialized in a TV mini-series in 2021 in an obviously changed world from that of the book's publication in 2014.
For a review of the book, click here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/25/station-eleven-review-emily-st-john-mandel
