George RR Martin’s favourite book: “It should not have worked”
As the fascinating brain behind the A Song of Ice and Fire series, George RR Martin understands the real-world implications of literary fantasy better than most, bringing the genre to a new level when his stories of political violence were adapted for the small screen in Game of Thrones.
Inadvertently creating a cultural phenomenon, Martin brought forth a fearless, fantastical vision of humanity’s darkest qualities, wherein part of his work’s endurance lies in the provocative, shamelessly showing in his work’s depictions of violence, sex and taboo.
Certainly, there is an intent for shock value, as the majority of literature and film’s best works stand to sustain over time, but beyond these moments’ initial surprise are the reasons why we enjoy the gore of horror, the brutality of violence, the confrontation of morality, which is to be entertained, sure, but also to dissect the parts of ourselves that keep returning to such graphic imagery, written on the page or adapted for the screen.
With his A Song of Ice and Fire series, Martin demonstrated a deep understanding of the nuances that come with consuming subversive media, crafting a world that held a controversial lens to society’s deepest questions, one that continues to polarise and stun; thus, it is fitting that the author is captivated by works that tackle similar themes.
While he is evidently influenced by fantasy’s greatest forebearers, including high fantasy author JRR Tolkien and comic book writer Stan Lee, Martin chose a contemporary novel and writer as one of his favourites: Station Eleven by Canadian novelist and essayist Emily St John Mandel.
Station Eleven is the writer’s fourth novel, published in 2014, a post-apocalyptic thriller that, similar to Martin’s work, was later adapted by Patrick Somerville for HBO in the form of a mini-series in 2021, incurring a phenomenon of its own, with the New York Times even naming it one of the top books of the century.
The story takes place in the aftermath of societal collapse when, 15 years earlier, a flu pandemic eradicated the majority of the world’s population, with the protagonist, Kirsten, with the Traveling Symphony, a nomadic group of Shakespearean actors, attempting to find their footing once again. Performing for the survivors of the pandemic, scattered across the Great Lakes region of America, they venture into an outpost, St Deborah by the Water, where they find themselves confronted by a sinister prophet who digs the graves of anyone who tries to leave.
Station Eleven’s story unfolds over the course of decades, assembled in glimpses of life before and after the pandemic to comment on humanity in the face of doom and struggle. “This book should not have worked, but it does,” Martin proclaimed in his Livejournal blog, noting, “It’s a deeply melancholy novel, but beautifully written, and wonderfully elegiac”.
To think that a similar plague would be inflicted in real-time just five-and-a-half years later is harrowing in itself, but equally eerie is Mandel’s theme of grasping for normalcy in a world that has become completely devoid of such a concept. His work makes for an intriguing study of character, which Martin evidently resonates with, as he concluded his praise of Station Eleven with the description: “A book that I will long remember, and return to”.
