Using Provost’s example, we are going to practice his advice by writing a blurb for Station Eleven. A blurb is what you find on the back of a book. It should be brief (usually no longer than 250 words) but exciting. This will count as one of your pop culture collective posts.
A short outline of the plot is helpful, but don’t give away too much.
Use evocative and emotive buzzwords to catch a reader’s attention. From the back of our copy: “devastating”, “pandemic”, “violent prophet”, “strange twist of fate”.
Similarly, try to encapsulate the tone of your book in your blurb so that a reader can instantly tell what genre your book is. In this way, try to make your blurb in keeping with your title and any jacket art - they are all on the cover and all make up the first impression that a reader will see.
Write your blurb in the present tense, so the action seems fresh and more immediate. Also, writing in third person will allow you to summarise the main concerns of the novel more easily.
Remember that, more often than not, the characters are the most important aspect of the book - don’t let other factors overshadow them.
Make sure you hint towards the main conflicts in your book: for example in romantic fiction, will the couple will overcome the obstacles and live happily ever after? These conflicts ought to be the main arc of the book and so you want to convey this, but without giving away what actually happens.
Finally, consider why your book is different from the others - what is unique about your book and make sure to include it.
The one difference between what you see on book jackets and what you’ll be writing today is that your blurb should be honest. Your purpose is not to sell the book, but to review it in a fresh and concise way. Some potential prompts include the following:
How did you feel about the way the novel described the fall of society? Was it believable? Did you feel you were given enough or too much information?
Did you find the shifts between pre and post-apocalypse to be an effective storytelling technique?
Jeevan stands out as a central character who ends up disconnected from the overall narrative. Why do you think Mandel chose to devote so much space to him?
Were you satisfied with the end? Was everything too neat or untidy for you?
Below are reviews shortened into blurbs:
Mandel is an able and exuberant storyteller, and many readers will be won over by her nimble interweaving of her characters’ lives and fates…Station Eleven is as much a mystery as it is a post-apocalyptic tale, and Mandel is especially good at planting clues and raising the kind of plot-thickening questions that keep the reader turning pages…If Station Eleven reveals little insight into the effects of extreme terror and misery on humanity, it offers comfort and hope to those who believe, or want to believe, that doomsday can be survived, that in spite of everything people will remain good at heart, and that when they start building a new world they will want what was best about the old.
Sigrid Nunez - New York Times Book Review
In Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, the Georgia Flu becomes airborne the night Arthur Leander dies during his performance as King Lear. Within months, all airplanes are grounded, cars run out of gas and electricity flickers out as most of the world’s population dies. The details of Arthur’s life before the flu and what happens afterward to his friends, wives and lovers create a surprisingly beautiful story of human relationships amid such devastation. Among the survivors are Kirsten, a child actor at the time of Arthur’s death who lives with no memory of what happened to her the first year after the flu…. A gorgeous retelling of Lear unfolds through Arthur’s flashbacks and Kirsten’s attempt to stay alive.
Nancy Hightower - Washington Post
Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven sensitively explores the dynamics of….a theater troupe called the Traveling Symphony whose musicians and actors perform Shakespeare for small communities around the Great Lakes. Ms. Mandel…. writ[es] with cool intelligence and poised understatement. Her real interest is in examining friendships and love affairs and the durable consolations of art.
Sam Sacks - Wall Street Journal
If you’re planning to write a post-apocalyptic novel, you’re going to have to breathe some new life into it. Emily St. John Mandel does that with her new book, Station Eleven…. The story is told through several characters, including an A-list actor, his ex-wives, a religious prophet and the Traveling Symphony, a ragtag group of Shakespearean actors and musicians who travel to settlements performing for the survivors. Each bring a unique perspective to life, relationships and what it means to live in a world returned to the dark ages…. Mandel doesn’t put the emphasis on the apocalypse itself (the chaos, the scavenging, the scientists trying to find a cure), but instead shows the effects it has on humanity. Despite the state of the world, people find reasons to continue…. Station Eleven will change the post-apocalyptic genre. While most writers tend to be bleak and cliched, Mandel chooses to be optimistic and imaginative. This isn’t a story about survival, it’s a story about living.
Andrew Blom - Boston Herald
Mandel deviates from the usual and creates what is possibly the most captivating and thought-provoking post-apocalyptic novel you will ever read…. Beautiful writing…. An assured handle on human emotions and relationships…. Though not without tension and a sense of horror, Station Eleven rises above the bleakness of the usual post-apocalyptic novels because its central concept is one so rarely offered in the genre—hope.
Independent (UK)
A beautiful and unsettling book, the action moves between the old and new world, drawing connections between the characters and their pasts and showing the sweetness of life as we know it now and the value of friendship, love and art over all the vehicles, screens and remote controls that have been rendered obsolete. Mandel’s skill in portraying her post-apocalyptic world makes her fictional creation seem a terrifyingly real possibility. Apocalyptic stories once offered the reader a scary view of an alternative reality and the opportunity, on putting the book down, to look around gratefully at the real world. This is a book to make its reader mourn the life we still lead and the privileges we still enjoy.
Sunday Express (UK)
A novel that carries a magnificent depth…. We get to see something that is so difficult to show or feel – how small moments in time link together. And how these moments add up to a life…. Her best yet. It feels as though she took the experience earned from her previous writing and braided it together to make one gleaming strand…. An epic book.
Claire Cameron - Globe and Mail (Toronto)
So impressive…. Station Eleven is terrifying, reminding us of how paper-thin the achievements of civilization are. But it’s also surprisingly— and quietly—beautiful…. As Emily Dickinson knew and as Mandel reminds us, there’s a sumptuousness in destitution, a painful beauty in loss…. A superb novel. Unlike most postapocalyptic works, it leaves us not fearful for the end of the world but appreciative of the grace of everyday existence.
Anthony Domestic - San Francisco Chronicle
Darkly lyrical…. An appreciation of art, love and the triumph of the human spirit…. Mandel effortlessly moves between time periods…. The book is full of beautiful set pieces and landscapes; big, bustling cities before and during the outbreak, an eerily peaceful Malaysian seashore, and an all-but-abandoned Midwest airport-turned museum that becomes an all important setting for the last third of the book…. Mandel ties up all the loose ends in a smooth and moving way, giving humanity to all her characters — both in a world that you might recognize as the one we all live in today (and perhaps take for granted) and a post-apocalyptic world without electricity, smartphones and the Internet.Station Eleven is a truly haunting book, one that is hard to put down and a pleasure to read.
Doug Knoop - Seattle Times
Haunting and riveting…. In several moving passages, Mandel’s characters look back with similar longing toward the receding pre-plague world, remembering all the things they’d once taken for granted — from the Internet to eating an orange…. It’s not just the residents of Mandel’s post-collapse world who need to forge stronger connections and live for more than mere survival. So do we all.
Mike Fischer - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Though it centers on civilization’s collapse in the aftermath of a devastating flu, this mesmerizing novel isn’t just apocalyptic fantasy—it’s also an intricately layered character study of human life itself. Jumping back and forth between the decades before and after the pandemic, the narrative interlaces several individuals’ stories, encompassing a universe of emotions and ultimately delivering a view of life that’s both chilling and jubilant.
People
Emily St. John Mandel’s tender and lovely new novel, Station Eleven…. miraculously reads like equal parts page-turner and poem…. One of her great feats is that the story feels spun rather than plotted, with seamless shifts in time and characters…. “Because survival is insufficient,” reads a line taken from Star Trek spray painted on the Traveling Symphony’s lead wagon. The genius of Mandel’s fourth novel…is that she lives up to those words. This is not a story of crisis and survival. It’s one of art and family and memory and community and the awful courage it takes to look upon the world with fresh and hopeful eyes.
Karen Valby - Entertainment Weekly
Few themes are as played-out as that of post-apocalypse, but St. John Mandel finds a unique point of departure from which to examine civilization’s wreckage…. With its wild fusion of celebrity gossip and grim future, this book shouldn’t work nearly so well, but St. John Mandel’s examination of the connections between individuals with disparate destinies makes a case for the worth of even a single life.
Publishers Weekly
A movie star who’s decided to pound the boards as King Lear collapses and dies mid-performance, and shortly thereafter civilization collapses and starts dying as well. The narrative then moves between the actor’s early career and a journey through the blasted landscape 15 years after the book’s opening events. Indie Next darling Mandel breaks out with a major publisher.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Survivors and victims of a pandemic populate this quietly ambitious take on a post-apocalyptic world where some strive to preserve art, culture and kindness…. Mandel spins a satisfying web of coincidence and kismet while providing numerous strong moments…. [S]olid writing and magnetic narrative make for a strong combination in what should be a breakout novel.
Kirkus Reviews
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