Station Eleven

I didn't think I wanted to read a pandemic novel, but I started watchign the HBO series and got curious. I'm so glad I read this book. This is fantastically written with well-drawn characters. I will say it is on the softer side of SF, meaning that it doesn't spend a lot of time worrying about the science behind the pandemic. The focus is really on how the characters respond to life's challenges- ranging from mundane, pre-pandemic personal struggles to, of course, the trauma of surviving a lethal global pandemic and the collapse of civilization. There is some suspense and danger inherent in the post-pandemic world, yet this book also avoids gratuitous violence. (For instance, on the spectrum of post-apocalypitc novels, Station Eleven would be pretty far from Cormac McCarthy's The Road.) This book is a really engaging, compassionate, intimate - and surprisingly hopeful - meditation on what is important in life. Unexpectedly the perffect thing to read while (fingers crossed) recovering from our own pandemic.