Station Eleven

This was the second dystopian novel I've read in the past six months or so - hardly a trend for me, but both of them presented very plausible scenarios. In Station Eleven the dystopia is initiated by a pandemic, with a 99% mortality rate, with death occurring within 24 hours of the first symptoms. The surviving-the-dystopia scenes are interspersed with flashbacks: to the day before the pandemic struck, to earlier events in the lives of the protagonists. I think the main messages that the novel brought to me was the importance of treasuring what seems to be the minutia of our daily lives (electricity! The Internet! Our loved ones!), and also that the longing for beauty, the created beauty of music and poetry, is inherent within us, and will endure.