What if a flu killed almost everyone and so you performed Shakespeare in a traveling band of vagabonds, and also famous actor flashbacks and creepy airport prophets and graphic novels and the 2008 financial crash were involved? And what if somehow it all worked?

Welcome to “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel, where you’ll find all that and more.

Fair warning, we summarize the plot in about the same way the book presents it, so things get disjointed…but we’re all having fun, right?