I thought I was the last person who hadn’t read this book when it was shortlisted, but I’m glad I didn’t read it any sooner. It was an emotionally draining read, taking me back to the very early days of the pandemic, and three years was a good amount of space for me.

The book follows a loosely connected cast of characters, seeing their experience through the earliest days of their pandemic, and their stories of survival through to Year 15 and beyond. I thought it was excellent. Some scenes will haunt me for a very long time, and while much of the early pandemic scenes are loosely transferable to our own, their flu truly took them to apocalypse, and I thought much of the book was not anything like our world now.

Does this book help shift perspectives? I’m going to argue that this book isn’t actually that transferable, even though we are in the aftermath of a pandemic like those in Station Eleven. *SPOILERS* This is because in this book, the virus is extremely virulent, people die in a day or two, and the fatality rate is 99%. The characters in Station Eleven are truly *post*-pandemic, in that there is no reference to it persisting in the world among the few survivors. The challenges we have now becoming accustomed to an endemic disease that is still dangerous to many members of the public just don’t show.

Also, another major challenge we have is misinformation related to the disease, and a group of society that believes it is fake, and wearing masks is a threat to freedom. This also has no bearing in Station Eleven, where the internet does not exist. The closest comparison is the book following one cult that formed, but that’s resolved by literally killing the leader. Obviously that’s not a transferable solution to our world. 

So did I love Station Eleven? Yes, and I’d happily recommend it to everybody who likes a human-centred sci-fi book. But I don’t think it will help shift perspectives on the challenges we are experiencing now in our endemic world.