Amanda McClendon: I work for a largish public library system. Station Eleven and All the Light We Cannot See both have request lists in the lower dozens—more than most books in the stacks, but they’re not Fifty Shades or the next Harry Potter. They’ll both be book club reads; well-educated middle-class people will read the mess out of these (and have, if the New York Times bestseller lists are any indication). Someone will probably make a movie or an HBO miniseries out of them, or should, anyway. I feel like I should keep my copies for my yet-unborn children, because in the 2040s or ’50s some English professor will teach a class on the early-21st-century novel, and I feel like at least one of these will make it to that class. They’re both smart without being inaccessible.

ToB 2015 Reader Judge Amanda McClendon lives in Houston, Texas, where she works full-time for a library and part-time for a tiny Baptist church. You can read her random missives on religion, coffee, and Doctor Who on Twitter at @akmcclen. Known connections to this year’s contenders: “None.”

It took me a while to get into the actual plot of Station Eleven. The prose itself is amazing: vivid and sensory without being a laundry list of description. And most of the characters and their interactions with one another felt real; these are people I could know, albeit ones thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Until the book’s third act, though, the storyline didn’t really cohere for me, the narrative strands touching briefly without actually interweaving with one another. (And actually, I felt the same way about the interviews in Silence Once Begun, which would have been an interesting foil to this.)

But then it clicked: I’d initially approached it as a straightforward sci-fi doomsday story, and so the thread about the actor Arthur and his long cord of failed relationships kept getting in the way. Except for the initial encounter between all the characters at the theater on Arthur’s last night, it felt like reading two entirely different books, a genre piece and a work of literary fiction. I don’t really know why it took me two thirds of the book to let go of that notion, but once I did, I got it. The survival of the human race in this book isn’t, in the end, the point. It’s the catalyst for a discussion of personal and cultural memory, personal and cultural loss, and how we are transformed by trauma.

I do have one major frustration: The prophet of the post-apocalypse felt more like a plot device, a last resort to figuratively tie up all those loose ends—Kirstin and her troupe and [guy’s name here] and the group at the airport—and less like a fully developed character. He’s treated as an archetype, making him less fleshed out than the other people in this story. But for this guided meditation, I owe Mandel and her band of wanderers a debt. (Also, my inner English undergraduate wants to go off on a tangent about the Shakespeare plays used in the book, King Lear and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and how their themes weave into the overall effect of the book, but that’s an honors thesis waiting to happen. Any college kids reading this, you can have that one for free.)

I’ve been reading Anthony Doerr’s columns for The Morning News for ages and was already a fan when All the Light came out, so it was good to have a reason to bump it to the top of my to-be-read list. Plus, I’m a sucker for a good historical novel, especially when set in World War II. I burned through all 500-odd pages in a weekend, the chapters lasting about a minute or two apiece. If Station Eleven is a tapestry, All the Light is a film set; its world is so tangible I could almost taste it. Its present-tense narration made it feel somewhat cinematic to me, like I was watching the action in real time.

Marie-Laure and Etienne and Madame Manec’s affection for one another; their involvement in the resistance movement and their sheer giddiness in doing something, anything, to help the war effort; their grief for Marie-Laure’s father—I kept circling back around to their story, just for the joy and the sorrow displayed there. Marie-Laure’s experience of the world through sound and smell and taste reminded me in the best way of books I read as a kid, that delight in how the world works.

Werner’s story, though, I could have almost done without. Were it not for the fact that [spoiler] he saves Marie-Laure’s life near the end, I could have extracted him from the book entirely and would maybe have enjoyed it more. He’s so passive as a character, letting life happen to him until he finally makes a couple of crucial and ultimately tragic choices near the end. And the plotline of the lost diamond served mostly to create a sense of danger that wasn’t really necessary—for God’s sake, these people live during World War II in France, how much more danger do they need without this MacGuffin getting in the way?

I stayed for Doerr’s writing, though—I know the word “luminous” is so hacky, especially in reference to a book that plays with themes of light and vision, but it flipped some switch in my imagination. I mean: “Seconds later, she’s eating wedges of wet sunlight.” “…a spotlight has been shined into a wedge of bloodshot water, and the sky has become the sea, and the airplanes are hungry fish, harrying their prey in the dark.”

Even still, a reader can’t live on beautiful sentences alone. Station Eleven ultimately had more substance for me, its characters more actively involved in deciding their own fates, their emotional lives more explored. Crazy cult leaders aside, its loose ends got tied up more securely for me. All the Light was pleasurable, but the ending and the interactions between Werner and Marie-Laure smacked too much of the manic pixie dream girl trope.

Station Eleven gets my vote. Fellow judges, you can take it from here.

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Matthea Harvey: Given my equal love of fully imagined post-apocalyptic futures (Station Eleven) and miniatures (oh the little houses with secret compartments in All the Light We Cannot See), this was a hard one. I loved that both stories had objects (objectively precious, or made precious by a person’s attachment to it) at their centers. Despite Doerr’s gorgeous prose, I was ultimately just a hair more astounded by Mandel’s intricate tracking of characters, observations such as a dog looking “like a cross between a fox and a cloud,” and the heartbreaking Museum of Civilization, so I’m giving this one to Station Eleven.

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Elliot Ackerman: Station Eleven and All the Light We Cannot See are both intricate and tightly structured achievements. As each novel progressed, disassembling its myriad characters and plot threads, I felt as though I was watching my son take apart the living room television set with a screwdriver, promising me he’d reconstruct it into a grandfather clock. Remarkably, both novels come together beautifully, making this a tough judgment. But with the Mandel, I felt a level of emotive force in the writing that surpassed the Doerr. The characters inhabiting the post-apocalyptic world of Station Eleven felt more true than those inhabiting the historical world of All the Light We Cannot See.

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Elisabeth Donnelly: Station Eleven happened to come my way during one of the worst weeks of my life. So even if the book is a singular, new-feeling take on survival after the pandemic, to my black hole of a heart, it just felt like a book-length expansion on Louis CK’s “everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy” routine. Like Station Eleven, All the Light We Cannot See is about the unknown, the awesome—how humanity can survive during times of horror. At the end of the day, however, style and precision moved me more than the new. Doerr wrote sentences that will haunt me. He wins.

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Stephen Marche: Despite how many people try it, the fusion of high and low culture, or writerly and readerly modes of fiction, is actually very tricky to do, and can so easily result in either pandering or pretension. Station Eleven is a book that shows exactly why it’s so worth pursuing. In equal parts pleasurable and illuminating, it’s the kind of book you consume in a sitting and which then resonates for weeks and months after you read it. What more can you ask from a book?

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Victor LaValle: I admit I am glad this final judgment is a goliath-versus-goliath battle. My natural tendency to support the underdog doesn’t apply. Station Eleven is engrossing and meditative while All the Light We Cannot See is thrilling and brilliantly drawn. Both are, in the best sense, sentimental novels. Both risk looking foolishly hopeful, about love or art, and they’re infinitely better for it. It was, finally, a question of scale that solidified my decision. Somehow a small slice of the apocalypse left me feeling fuller than a large serving of a world at war.

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Alice Sola Kim: The tournament ends with two books, both of which pull off the rare feat of being equally beloved by the choosiest of book connoisseurs and the most normcore of bestseller readers. All the Light We Cannot See is World War II as filtered through good-hearted, beauty-loving, weirdo obsessives. It is precisely written, brimming with lovely sentences (sometimes distractingly so) that reify the beauty and grace its characters seek in the world. ATLWCS acknowledges the horror and mind-boggling unfairness of war, but only within the dictates of the consolatory story it tells. Thus, it is ultimately a very predictable story; nothing about the book ever surprised me. Earlier this month, I made the hard choice to ixnay Station Eleven, which I’m jazzed to encounter again here. Old pal! I enjoyed its sense of wholeness and its control over a sprawling constellation of actors and events, but I especially loved the strange and gorgeous details of its world—a city in an airport, a way of life in a self-published comic book series. My heartiest human-to-zombie high-five to Station Eleven.

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Christina Bevilacqua: Both books were beautifully imagined and written, and shared so much: narratives (one in the past, one in the future) traveling backward and forward in time; information revealed retrospectively; characters in global catastrophes navigating blasted landscapes, both comforted and besieged by memories of lost worlds; characters coming to terms with the world via artistic renderings of reimaginings of it; even a talismanic, heavy round object that carried meaning from one character to another. My vote finally goes to Station Eleven, for reading the present as though from a knowing future, for making the familiar strange and the strange familiar, for apprehending and articulating something we can’t quite see.

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Tayari Jones: My favorite novels are twisty and gritty-glam, so I really loved these two books. All the Light We Cannot See is crazy popular and I completely see why everyone loves it so much. I loved it that much. This book goes down like cool water because it was beautiful, engaging, and also just a wee tiny bit familiar. Station Eleven is a little fresher, braver, and despite the apocalypse, more lovely. Further, Mandel is a demon for plot, and I am here for it. Give that woman the Rooster!

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Manuel Gonzales: About an eighth of the way through All the Light We Cannot See, Marie-Laure is reading Around the World in 80 Days, and “when, after two months, she reaches the novel’s last line, she flips back to the first page and starts again,” which is the exact same reaction I had when I finished Station Eleven. And while All the Light is undeniably beautiful and heartrending and impressive, I have to give my vote to the novel that wouldn’t let me go, even after I’d finished reading it: Station Eleven.

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Meg Wolitzer: I can easily imagine the writers of these two distinctly different, very fine novels in a lively conversation; surely they’d appreciate each other’s sensibility. (I know that I definitely appreciated them both.) The beauty and sweep of Doerr’s novel makes it unusual and memorable; the inventiveness and exploration of ideas about survival and art give Mandel’s novel its indelibility. Both are well-constructed, exciting books, and I’m very glad I read them. Station Eleven amazed me with its sharp and emotionally true reimagining of nearly everything we take for granted in the world, and so, finally, it’s the book I chose.

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Jessica Lamb-Shapiro: Once a pet-store owner asked me if I’d like to enter my dog in the dog of the week contest, for 15 percent off my next purchase. I asked her what criteria she used to choose between dogs. She told me she laid out all the photos on the floor and let her dog pick. This is how I feel about choosing between these two great books. All the Light We Cannot See delighted me with its fresh take on a familiar subject, pacing, plot, and multitude of natural-history facts. Station Eleven won me over with its humor, emotional specificity, and the fact that I never knew at any moment what was going to happen next. Also, multiple pomeranians! I liked All the Light a smidge better, so that’s how I’m casting my vote. (My dog, incidentally, chose Station Eleven.)

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Victor Vazquez: All the Light We Cannot See is a pretty ornate, textural World War II meditation. As far as those go it’s accessible, interesting, and at times surprisingly nimble. I would call it “audacious” and/or “ambitious, but not to a fault.” Station Eleven is a novel, distinct romp; a weavy, casually post-apocalyptic novel of manners. They’re both solid trips but I found Station Eleven to be more distinct: newer, bolder, altogether the superior read.

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Laura Cogan: Here we have two beautifully written, carefully crafted novels that take worldwide catastrophe as the backdrop for a highly improbable series of interconnected events. They are engaging novels that will whisk you away, if you’re willing to be whisked—and based on the results of the Zombie voting, it seems everyone would like that very much, thank you. But whereas Mandel’s apocalypse is fictional, and therefore has the luxury of setting (and succeeding on) its own terms, Doerr sets his novel amid World War II. The way All the Light We Cannot See treats its historical circumstances, particularly its superficial treatment of fascism, renders the book inescapably problematic for me. So I’m voting for Station Eleven—though I look forward to reading more from both of these authors.

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J. Courtney Sullivan: I’ve loved following the tournament these recent weeks—judgments and comments alike. Elliott Holt described novels as having “thread counts.” I’ve thought a lot about that. I have, in fact, affixed a Post-It with THREAD COUNT written on it to the window above my desk. Both finalists are high-thread-count kinda books. I thought Doerr’s language was detailed, rich, and often quite beautiful. But Mandel’s story felt more original to me. The emphasis on what one character describes as “taken for granted miracles” has stayed with me, making me notice the magic in everyday life a little more than I otherwise might.

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Nicole Cliffe: I am still utterly and completely the lyrics of “Oh, Yoko!” about Station Eleven, it is the winner of my heart and my vote, so let me devote my allotted words to saying nice things about All the Light We Cannot See. How wonderful that it’s flying off the shelves! Good for you, America. It reminds me a bit of Anne Michaels’s Fugitive Pieces, down to the chewy, tactile language (also Nazis). I was engrossed by All the Light We Cannot See without being transfixed, the correct adjective for my reading experience of Station Eleven. I could pick up ATLWCS, set it down, do laundry, eat lunch, return, feel like a stranger to its world for a moment, and then be elegantly brought back into the text. That’s very good. With Station Eleven, I couldn’t bring myself to leave in the first place.

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Stephin Merritt: My friend Emma Straub says Emily St. John Mandel has “major chops,” and so she does. Mandel and Doerr both like to bounce around their story chronology like random-access hard drives, but Mandel’s purpose is to contrast the times before and after her influenzapocalypse, whereas Doerr is just withholding information, which gets precious. Station Eleven fits comfortably into what Brian Aldiss disparages as the “cosy catastrophe” genre, which means there aren’t bodily fluids splattering about, and—unlike my two earlier tournament books—no gang rape. I like it that way. So sue me.

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