Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Station Eleven (Television Tie-in)  By  cover art

Station Eleven (Television Tie-in)

By: Emily St. John Mandel
Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.00

Buy for $18.00

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Editorial reviews

Editors Select, September 2014 - Station Eleven may take place during the end of civilization, but don’t make the mistake of discounting it as just another apocalyptic tale. The narrative shifts between past and present and follows five characters, each connected in some fateful way. We begin on a stage, where a world-famous actor suddenly dies while performing King Lear, and jump to Year 20, where a group known as the Traveling Symphony Orchestra travels between settlements, performing Shakespeare to captivated audiences. The result is a fascinating, suspenseful story that, despite its setting, is anything but bleak. I am eagerly awaiting more from Emily St. John Mandel, and I can’t wait to experience the book again with narration from Kirsten Potter ( If I Stay). Sam, Audible Editor

Publisher's summary

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. Now an original series on HBO Max. Over one million copies sold!

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.

Look for Emily St. John Mandel’s bestselling new novel, Sea of Tranquility!

©2014 Emily St. John Mandel (P)2014 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

National Book Award Finalist

Winner of the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award

One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Buzzfeed, and Entertainment Weekly, Time, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Minnesota Public Radio, The Huffington Post, BookPage, Time Out, Book Riot

“Deeply melancholy, but beautifully written, and wonderfully elegiac . . . A book that I will long remember, and return to.” — George R. R. Martin

Station Eleven is so compelling, so fearlessly imagined, that I wouldn’t have put it down for anything.” — Ann Patchett

Featured Article: A Bittersweet Symphony: A Station Eleven Explainer


Station Eleven is one of the most successful and popular novels of the 21st century so far. Set in a future North America where a deadly flu wipes out 99% of the population, this post-apocalyptic saga focuses on several survivors as they struggle to find meaning and beauty again. Station Eleven is certainly a different listening experience today, in a pandemic-stricken world, than it was when it was first released, less than a decade ago.

What listeners say about Station Eleven (Television Tie-in)

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    7,158
  • 4 Stars
    4,139
  • 3 Stars
    1,805
  • 2 Stars
    420
  • 1 Stars
    201
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    7,898
  • 4 Stars
    3,224
  • 3 Stars
    852
  • 2 Stars
    143
  • 1 Stars
    80
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    6,326
  • 4 Stars
    3,401
  • 3 Stars
    1,708
  • 2 Stars
    495
  • 1 Stars
    251

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

gah!

I was really into this story-beautifully written, interesting characters- then it just ended.

What the beep?

So I'm left to ponder what happened to all these people, and what was the real point of the book. I get it, I guess, but I seriously had no idea that the book was about to end when the "audible hopes you've enjoyed this program" came on. I wanted more! wahh!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

134 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Melancholy, Reflection, and Venison

I can't say what kind of apocalyptic society member I would be. A religious, rapture-ish event... I'd have to brush up on my survival skills, but a nuclear event or count down to Armageddon, and I would place my chair at Ground Zero, because I wouldn't want to be without the people I love, nor would I choose to live in a world where there was not some form of beauty, or sense of community. Alone, fighting just to survive, I would wind up as mad as King Lear. Station Eleven opens with a scene from the Shakespeare play and expands on the themes of survival and meaning.

Opening night, the lead actor suffers a heart attack and passes away. The news that night pronounces the actor's passing, and barely mentions a mysterious illness that has people flooding hospital ERs. Within 3 weeks, 99% of the world will die from a flu pandemic. Forward: Twenty years later, a troupe of actors and musicians called The Travelling Symphony moves from one outcropping of survivors to another performing plays and music. Their mission statement sounds enlightened and magnanimous, an ode to the arts... “Because survival is insufficient,” it is a quote one member recalls from a Star Trek episode he watched as a child. The troupe includes a woman that was a young child in the King Lear production the night the actor had his heart attack on stage.

At times, author St. John Mandel is eloquent with understated visions of a broken world. Her museum of artifacts is a centerpiece that connects people and stories, including the actor Leander. His personal life, his celebrity, is captured there in articles from the celebrity magazines left intact. She doesn't go into the breakdown of society or the aftermath of the pandemic, but focuses on the emptiness and melancholy borne of lost loved ones, simple pleasures only remembered, and the connections that remain stretched across a barren world, traversed by The Travelling Symphony. Here, the author is a mighty gentle giant.

Beyond the difficulties of surviving day to day, there is a menacing group of brutal men ruled by The Prophet, but sadly,he makes only a brief appearance and whimpers away. Just when I was hoping for a little trouble-maker to take my mind off the moping and memories, and roasting venison over burning tires, again. Once you get the general premise, you better be ready to dwell on it. Mandel writes beautifully and has created a world that is eerie and surreal, but I started to feel swallowed by the melancholy. For all the hype, all the great reviews, all the promises that I would be haunted by this powerful story, I wasn't feeling it. From my frame of reference, it's been done before. Mandel thinks outside the apocalyptic genre box, but doesn't enlarge the real estate.

The book stays high centered in that world of reflection, the menagerie of meandering melancholics mourning the past, hoping for a better future, chewing deer meat, occasionally appreciating the arts, coming up with some profound thoughts--wallowing in sentimentality. I recommend the book, in spite of my sarcastic, irreverent nature; but not to hard-core apocalyptic/dystopia fans, or anyone that believes the saying "you can't move forward with one foot in the past." (I think Mr.Spock said that in an episode.) It is a lovely novel, written beautifully-- my head tells me so.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

102 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Airport Paperback

Maybe this is not a completely terrible book. I was really up for something that had both a symphony orchestra and Star Trek references-- and who doesn't like a good post-apocalypse? But my God, what's with the critical raves and nominations for fancy book prizes? Are these people nuts? There is glaring hokiness on every single page: the pedestrian, almost clunky writing; the empty characters; the bad-movie dialogue; the predictable villain; the barrage of cliches. The lameness just washes over you.

The whole thing is not helped much by the reader, whose delivery only amplifies the built-in corniness, and who surely cannot do a British accent. Also, the audio quality doesn't seem great (though maybe I'm just ranting now).

It's possible for a book to have all these flaws, and still be decent entertainment. I finished it, after all. Just manage your expectations. Think of it as a serviceable beach book. If you are looking for something "luminous" or "spellbinding" or whatever hype they are dishing, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

101 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

DON'T FALL FOR THE HYPE: THIS BOOK IS TERRIBLE!!

I am really struggling to understand what people like about this book. This book is terrible.

The characters are so poorly drawn. Arthur, a vapid movie star drifts from woman to woman without conscience. His existence as a movie star is dimly imagined as if through the lens of a person who only reads UsWeekly. His craft is only discussed inso far as to ruminate (uninterestingly) on celebrity (actors sacrifice privacy, paparazzi are opportunist scum, the money and glamour are ultimately unfulfilling: nothing illuminating here)
Miranda lives with some dude for a few years, wakes up one day decides to move in with a movie star she bed the night before time passes & with no real understanding of what went wrong between them (or why they even liked each other) she becomes, apropos of no sort of instruction or schooling, based solely on a temp job she took several years earlier, a shipping magnate (but only after discovering the right pair of shoes!) In her spare time she writes and draws a graphic novel she never intends to publish, and most frustratingly, the author and nearly every character & even Miranda herself continually blur the distinction between a comic *book* and comic *strip*. Then there's several members of a post-apocalyptic orchestra who are boilerplate and interchangeable (was there a difference between Deiter & August). Oh! And there's a guy who is a paparazzo but only for a while before becoming an EMT cos THAT happens. This book is so shitty it's actually making me mad.

Then there's the apocalypse. If you are looking for a new or evolved spin on the end of the world plague story look elsewhere, survivors in this book do the same things you've already seen in a bunch of other (better) books: walk a lot, miss electricity and especially mobile devices, learn to hunt and fish and basically do everything you've probably already thought of yourself if you were ever high and wondered what would happen if the world ended in a great big plague. Scratch that, you probably came up with more interesting things when you were high, like, I'd live in the White House or inside the Statue of Liberty.

The book lacks intelligence, none of the characters are especially engaging, the quality of the writing is strong in spots but not sufficient enough to excuse the very flimsy plotting & character work. This is easily one of the most disappointing books I've read in a long time. About halfway through I considered quitting it, after finishing it I wish I had, it never improved. Meaningless characters drift and then it ends.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

91 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Symphonies, Caravans, Comics, and a Plague

Station Eleven is not the typical post-apocalyptic tale. Based on the quality of writing , it is considered "literary." While I didn't find the narrative overly compelling, Emily St. John Mandel does have a knack for descriptive scenes and character development. The author's tale of post-apocalyptic society revolves around a traveling symphony, a migratory convoy performing Shakespeare plays in the remaining small villages of America. The narrator of this audiobook, Kirsten Potter, does a excellent job and keeps the reader/listener engaged through what I consider to be a slow-moving first couple of hours. While most novels of the post-apocalyptic genre focus on the evils the deterioration of modern society must surely bring, Station Eleven focuses more on the hope that not all is lost. While the horrors of civilization's demise certainly occur within in the novel, these horrors are more of a backdrop rather than the focal point of the narrative. Station Eleven is an artistic version of an apocalyptic setting, an above average read for those looking for a change of pace. Overall rating: 4.11 stars

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

87 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

An Alternative Dystopian Viewpoint

A masterfully executed dystopian novel from a feminine perspective. Although I am a fan of this genre of literature, I have yet to read (or listen via Audible) to one so rich in the description of human relationships in a post apocalyptic world. Maybe Margaret Atwood comes close. No zombies or AI units wanting to dominate the planet here, just folks trying to figure out what it means to be human in a brand new world. The primary adage of Mandel's work "survival is insufficient" says it all.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

59 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Thought I'd never get through it

The only reason I finished this book was that it was a selection for my book club.

Too many disjointed scenes... too many characters with no apparent connection to one another.

I have so many questions..

Why did it matter that Arthur died on stage and Kirsten was there when the virus began? Why did they keep going back to that?
Why did some people have names, and others were "the guitar, the flute"?
I get the "survival is not enough" theme.. but really.. a traveling band of folks performing Shakespeare (but calling themselves "The Symphony")?
Who and why was the prophet?
What did the Station Eleven stuff have to do with anything? (Why is that the name of the book)?

Most of all..

WHAT WAS THE POINT???

I hope there is a LOT OF WINE at my book club meeting this Sunday....

Yeah.. sorry..

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

52 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Why do end-of-the-world survivors stay in tents?

There are millions and millions of empty houses, with roofs and walls, perhaps wood-burning fireplaces if you're lucky, beds to sleep in and probably sheets and blankets and towels and, and, and. Just remove all the dead bodies and Bob's your Uncle. But it never fails, books and the movies always show the few survivors squatting in miserable tents or thrown up shelters. Or in this case, gas stations and Walmarts.
And why do they always move about? Why don't they stay in one spot, plant a garden, take over a dairy cow or domesticated chickens whose owner has died? Why the wanderlust?
That's what I'd do. But I guess I would be a poor protagonist so no books would ever be written about me.
This book did keep me listening to the end, but there were a lot of false leads and half-developed characters. I wish there had been fewer foci, and that the characters had more depth. I'm just getting interested in Jeavon when we move on to Kiki, and then Arthur gets a turn, then Miranda. Pick a protagonist and stick to it!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

52 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Literary take on EOWAWKI...

I had great hopes as I started to read that this was going to be another well written post apocalyptic novel like "The Postman", "Silo Series, "On The Beach, "The Road", "Swan Song" or "The Stand" and knew not to expect a prepper view like "Jakarta Pandemic." I didn't find a new gem and would read all of the above again before this...

I can see what Emily St. John Mandel was trying to do and it had a lot of potential. Perhaps she tried too hard. I like woven stories with voices and time changing... but this was so tightly woven in places and loosely woven in others that I struggled figuring out who I was with in what time period and why. I might have done better with multiple narrators or reading it in hard print. I also didn't like most of the characters and almost turned it off because I didn't really care. I enjoyed the time spent with the traveling actors... but felt the results of the apocalypse were inaccurately portrayed and just didn't feel real to me.

Unlike other reviewers, I did enjoy the end and felt that as her loose strands were all pulled together and then left open she said something... worth reading... once maybe.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

45 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

No ending

I don't understand...I was enjoying this book, and just starting to care for the characters enough to wonder how it would all come together or why we had been following these particular people when the book suddenly ended!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

36 people found this helpful