Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

From her position on stage, eight-year-old Kirsten witnesses the death of a Hollywood icon during his performance as King Lear at a Toronto theatre. That same evening a deadly flu virus arrives in the city, and within days the world as we know it has collapsed. Twenty years later, Kirsten is herself an actor, touring Shakespeare with the Travelling Symphony, crossing dangerous territory to bring theatre and music to communities of survivors.

This could easily have been written during the first lockdown of 2020 but was actually published six years earlier, and other than the virulence of the disease and the vast death toll, nothing in here feels exaggerated. The reactions of the protagonists and the world around them feel very real, even down to the bulk-buying of toilet paper in an early chapter.

But this isn’t really a book about a virus, or even about the end of the world. It’s a book about human connection, even where that connection is tangential, and about the importance of the things ‘beyond survival’ that bind us together. While the narrative arcs back and forth between characters, times and places both pre- and post-pandemic, the connections are subtly and sometimes surprisingly revealed.

It's a tribute to the quality of the storytelling here that I have continued to think about elements of the story in the weeks since reading it. This is not a happy book, but it is gently reassuring, and it repeatedly reminds us that ‘Survival is Insufficient’. Being human is not merely about existing and procreating, but also, and more importantly, it’s about memory, connection, the things we carry with us and the things we leave behind.

- Paul

Paperback, £9.99. Find it in the fiction section!

Widowland, by CJ Carey

It’s 1953 and Britain is on the eve of the second coronation of Edward VIII, thirteen years after a pact with Nazi Germany. Rose Ransom is in an elite class of women and works for the Ministry of Culture, bringing works of literature into line with Nazi ideals. Meanwhile, acts of vandalism involving lines of text from forbidden books are being blamed on women who are forced to live in the run-down ghetto known as Widowland. As an expert in the works the rebellious women are quoting, Rose is tasked to uncover the source before The Leader arrives in England…

I love good speculative and dystopian fiction, especially those set in a believable alternate reality. The reality portrayed here is all too believable, with well-rounded characters and a sense of the early 1950s in our reality with an Orwellian overlay of suspicion and paranoia. The result is a feminist thriller, with elements of Robert Harris' Fatherland and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

This could be a good book club read, as there’s a lot to discuss, but it’s also written with a style that makes it enjoyable despite the dystopian setting.

- Paul

Hardback, £14.99 - paperback released April 2022. Find it in the fiction