Any post-apocalyptic story was going to start out behind the ball for me, as I am not a fan. However, this one was written by acclaimed Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel, it’s one of Barack Obama’s faves, and has already been adapted for TV, so there’s a lot to like even before reading it. Additionally, the apocalypse in question is a fictional “flu” that decimates the world’s population and societies (this is not a spoiler, just context for the main narrative). This obviously rings relatable and hits close to home as we have all endured the COVID pandemic not long ago. Still, I think enough time has passed that a fictional analog makes a good touchstone for reflection. Ironically, if this book had  focused more on the pandemic and the events that occurred after the collapse of civilization afterwards, I might have enjoyed it more than I did. Instead, the opening scene (where a fictionally famous actor dies from a heart attack as he performs King Lear on stage at Toronto’s Elgin Winter Garden theatre — yes, I loved reading about locations just down the street from where I live) acts as a prelude for other interconnected pre-apocalyptic stories throughout the book. We flash back and forth through events in the life of Arthur Leander, the people in his orbit, and others connected to the events precipitating from the night of his death.

Though it’s kind of artsy, the non-linear timeline of the book was more challenging than helpful. Since I expected the story of what happens after the world has ended and humanity attempts to pick itself up, I was not paying close enough attention to the pre-pandemic back-stories of incidental characters. I thought that those scenes were merely “colour” or setup for some eventual emotional payoff and that we’d be quickly shifting to the future. But between relatively short chapters, we kept jumping around in time and between different characters’ lives, so that even by the end I could not tell you whether or not there was meant to be a protagonist to this book. I found this effect disengaging. If I reread the book now, I might enjoy it a lot more, and get much more from it, knowing what to expect. 

The post-apocalyptic part of the book followed a traveling troupe of actors/musicians as they went from place to place performing music and plays for clusters of people. The concept is interesting. Realistically, I’m not sure that such a thing would truly exist 20 years after the end of society, but it’s a great vehicle to discuss the value of art as a basic human need. Unfortunately (and again, ironically) that became less of a focus when plot elements started to get in the way. As the troupe made their way among small settlements of survivors, some familiar post-apocalyptic tropes (specifically doomsday cults and cult leaders) started to rear their heads. And though the plot  became a bit more thrilling, it was easy to forget the higher-minded ideas that we had previously expected to explore.

If you’re familiar with the TV series Lost, I kept thinking of that show while reading this book. With the time-jumping narratives, the character back-story focus, the crazy survival scenarios against bands of Others, they all rang a lot of bells — none of which were bad as I loved that show. (It provided plenty of great water cooler discussions in the office.) Another phenomenon from the late 90s were movies which also followed a diverse cast of characters who seemed to have no connection to each other. We follow their stories through dramatic scenes from their lives until we eventually learn how they are connected maybe by a common incident, or each character knows another character in a daisy-chain of association. I loved those movies. So, this book has so many things going for it, but it just ended up throwing me off, and while I did enjoy some of the latter parts of the story (especially one particular character named Clark) I find it difficult to understand the hype, the love, or the specialness of this book.

3 stars

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