Posted on December 16, 2021 at 2:00 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Those who are familiar with Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven might not be compelled to watch a TV adaptation of it in normal times, let alone in the current times.
After all, Station Eleven, published in 2014, tells the story of a pandemic.
But two reviews of the HBO Max adaptation — which began filming in January 2020 — both say it isn’t exactly pandemic fiction.
NPR’s Glen Weldon and Literary Hub’s Emily Temple acknowledge that, yes, the story starts with a deadly flu virus.
But the show focuses more on the bonding and connection of the few survivors than on the devastation of the outbreak.
Though the first episode, of necessity, covers some of the chaos of the fictional pandemic, writes Temple, the rest of the show is “an aftermath story” that’s about “resilience and hope.”
And Weldon felt similarly, saying that the Station Eleven team “rounded off its sharper, more despairing edges, and amplified its moments of humor, its small but deeply felt instances of connection and humanity.”
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Categories: Today in Books