Today I’m continuing our “completist” author series, in which my team and I share our experience with authors we love so much we’ve read every book they’ve published, six book minimum.
I began the series by writing about my love for Maggie O’Farrell, who is perhaps my favorite living author. When it came to who I might feature next, I had options! And I landed on Canadian author Emily St. John Mandel because I greatly admire her work, of course, and also because of the timing: I’ve only recently completed all her published works.
Like so many readers, Mandel’s 2014 post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven was my introduction to her work. That novel captivated me: I love stories that bring together seemingly unrelated plot lines in interesting ways; Mandel’s breakout weaves together a global pandemic, a traveling Shakespeare troupe, and a graphic novel. I feared it would be depressing, but instead found it striking, sympathetic, and hopeful, and re-read it numerous times in the years just after its publication in my quest to identify just exactly what it was about this book that spoke to me.
rereading Station Eleven at the beach
After revisiting Station Eleven numerous times, I finally picked up her 2012 crime novel The Lola Quartet in the summer of 2018. I wish I could remember why I decided to read it then: context clues point to a likely vacation impulse buy at our favorite beachside bookstore. What I know for sure is that I read it at the beach, and that experience directly led to a new project. On that trip, I shared an Instagram Story featuring what I was reading that day: my paperback copy of The Lola Quartet, water-spotted from poolside reading.
I was stunned by reader responses to that story, which by and large said, “I loved Station Eleven; I’m so glad she has a new book coming out.” Stunned, because it wasn’t new; at this point, it was six years old. Those responses and some subsequent soul-searching and readerly questioning planted the seed of the idea for our podcast One Great Book.
snapped on June 3, 2018
I gobbled up The Lola Quartet, and then intended to become a Mandel completist. That intention that didn’t stick: I remember checking the Last Night in Montreal ebook out from the library after our trip, but didn’t get very far. I don’t know why my attention wandered. But I continued reading Mandel’s books in order, as they were released. That means The Glass Hotel was next, then Sea of Tranquility … until this summer—but we’ll get to that when we look at individual titles.
Back in 2018, The Lola Quartet surprised me in a different way, not just via your Instagram replies. In reading it, I learned that so many of the characteristics I found captivating in Station Eleven were in fact not unique to that novel, as I had assumed, but instead were characteristic of Mandel’s more general style.
reading Sea of Tranquility in 2021
As I continued reading her work, I grew familiar with the hallmarks of her writing: a distinctive voice, rotating points of view, catalogs and lists, nonlinear narratives, intricate plotting. Her prose is easy to read (I find) yet intellectually demanding. She seems consistent in her interests: characters running from the past, characters forced to remake themselves or wholly become someone else, characters who contemplate (or actually live out) alternate versions of their realities. Over and over, we see themes of criminality, art and survival, parallel lives, identities shed and reconstructed.
Mandel plays with place and with travel (between cities, between worlds), resetting timelines, and building out something like a cinematic universe through her body of work. (She loves an Easter egg!)
When I wrote of Maggie O’Farrell, I spoke of the emotional resonance that drew me to her work. Not so with the work of Emily St. John Mandel: there’s an elegance and restraint to her prose that makes her invented worlds feel hazy, almost dream-like, to me. I’ve found this at-a-distance feeling frustrating in other authors’ novels, but I find the central questions that anchor Mandel’s novels to be interesting enough to overlook it. Or perhaps that’s not quite right: perhaps Mandel’s emotional restraint leaves room for the reader to have her own emotional experience.
snapped in October 2019
As you can see, I’ve meandered my way through her works, and that approach has been lovely. I don’t think there’s a bad order for her novels. But, in the spirit of a Mandel novel, let’s consider an alternate reality, where the Anne who is now an Emily St. John Mandel completist could advise a different Anne, living in August 2026, who hasn’t yet read a single Mandel novel. Past Anne would tell present Anne to read The Singer’s Gun now, read The Glass Hotel for kicks if there’s time, pounce on Exit Party when it comes out in September 2026, and from there to wherever the spirit leads her.
I hope you enjoy this look into the works of Emily St. John Mandel. Here’s a bit more about my experience with her novels. I’d love to hear about your own in comments.
Publication order:
- Last Night in Montreal (2009)
- The Singer’s Gun (2010)
- The Lola Quartet (2012)
- Station Eleven (2014)
- The Glass Hotel (2020)
- Sea of Tranquility (2022)
- Exit Party (2026)
Completist Author: Emily St John Mandel
Some links (including all Amazon links) are affiliate links. More details here.
Station Eleven
The Lola Quartet
Last Night in Montreal
The Singer’s Gun
The Glass Hotel
Sea of Tranquility
Exit Party
Do you have a favorite Emily St John Mandel novel? Please share in the comments.
P.S. Where to start with Maggie O’Farrell and more of our team’s Completist Author series.
12 comments
Re Emily St. John Mandel: I started with Station 11, when it was new, and later read The Glass Hotel, and now have The Singer’s Gun in paperback from the library. Thank you for pointing out the plot connections.
Oh, there are a lot of them! I’ve read two (Station Eleven more than once) and gave them both five stars on GR. Thanks for the reminder!
Oooh thanks for the tip on The Singers Gun connection to Exit Party—I’ve been wanting to reread it so now I have a real reason.
Am I the only one who found Last Night in Montreal to be unbearably bleak? I gave it away after I was done. The others, though, are 5 stars!
Perfect timing. My next read will be The Singer’s Gun (thanks to you). I plan on reading Exit Party when it is released.
Last Night in Montreal and The Lola Quartet are the two I have not read yet.
Usually I do not like dystopia or science fiction, but I do love Emily’s books. If it wasn’t for you, I probably would not have read any of them.
I’m so close to being an ESJM completionist too! I only have Last Night in Montreal left (and obviously Exit Party once it comes out).
I read Station Eleven, gave it a generous three star,she lost with all the chatter in the middle ,what is all that extra. Sorry one and done
I found the timing of this email regarding Emily St. John Mandel’s book and completist list funny! I read Station Eleven awhile ago and didn’t love it, didn’t get the hype, found it depressing (tbh), etc, and haven’t picked up any of her other books until recently. I joined an online book club called “The Book Tour Project” and it started out in the Netherlands and now travels all over the world – it’s a box with the book pick and other bookish things – look her up on Insta! Anyway we just finished reading “Sea of Tranquility” and I really enjoyed it, enough that I want to add it to 2027’s book club list for my in-person club. And the Glass Hotel looks really interesting too! So Anne, thanks for this post! I’m def interested in checking out more of her books and found some of them on my Libby app for the 1st time too.
Has anyone read Lisa Wingate? As a completist author?
I’ve always planned to read Emily St. John Mandel, but some other book requires my attention due to a book club commitment. So far, I’m an Anne George completest–I loved her Southern Sisters series. And I’m working on being a Fredrik Backman completest–The Winners is my only outstanding book of his.
Thank you for the heads up! Just purchased Singer’s Gun so I can read it before Exit Party.
I feel like it’s particularly appropriate to be a St. John Mandel completionist, because – if I remember correctly – when one of the main characters in Sea of Tranquility is on book tour, she muses about how readers think an author came to life at the time of their first best selling book and often are completely unaware of their backlist prior to that point. It’s true enough in my case, since I still need to read her first three books!
I’m thinking about it and I think I’m only a completionist with respect to Mhairi McFarlane, Melina Marchetta, and Robin McKinley. And I hope to one day read all books by Emily St. John Mandel, Lily King, Maggie O’Farrell, Toni Morrison, and Hanif Abdurraqib.
Like many I started with Station Eleven, I loved it and reread it before and after COVID. Then Glass Hotel, Last Night in Montreal and Sea of Tranquility. Loved them all but to my great surprise, I DNFed The Lola Quartet (too depressing), which put me off reading the Singer’s Gun. Now that I’ve read your post, I will read it before reading Exit Party when it comes out, and perhaps give Lola’s Quartet another chance after that.
As for “completism” (!?), I’ve read all Barbara Kingsolver’s novels (The Lacuna being one of, if not the favourite book of all time and no, Demon Copperhead was not depressing, sometimes very hard and sad but not depressing) and I’m so looking forward to Partita comming out in October!
Read Station Eleven years ago and loved it. The limited series (HBO?) was also very good. I’ve long meant to read her other works and really need to get on that. Thanks for this post on the author–love this “completist” theme. Please do more of these!