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Creation Lake
Win a free kindle copy of this book!
26 days and 20:02:20
100 copies available
U.S. only
A new novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner of glittering insights and dark humor.Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith� is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more. In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past. Just as Sadie is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story. Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner’s rendition of “noir� is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner’s finest achievement yet as a novelist, a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published September 3, 2024
6,717 people are currently reading
69.5k people want to read
About the author
Rachel Kushner
21books2,413followersRachel Kushner is the bestselling author of three novels: the Booker Prize- and NBCC Award–shortlisted The Mars Room; The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times top ten book of 2013; and Telex from Cuba, a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been awarded prizes and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her novels are translated into 26 languages. She lives in Los Angeles and wants you to know that if you're reading this and curious about Rachel, whatever is unique and noteworthy in her biography that you might want to find out about is in her new book, The Hard Crowd, which will be published in April 2021. An excerpt of it appeared in the New Yorker here: .
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,583 reviews
January 20, 2025
i was very kindly sent this book, and also a very cute that says CREATION LAKE on it.
so the whole time i read this was a high-stakes situation of really hoping i'd like the book so i could wear the hat.
my life is so hard.
fortunately, it's good news.
nothing much of anything happened in this book, which is a compliment. i plodded through it and felt immersed in a world of surveillance and clumsy dual motivations, unglamorous rural life and glamorous-on-paper jobs.
this is the kind of book that is full of things you google instead of action, which is my preference.
bottom line: my first rachel kushner but it won't be my last!
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
so the whole time i read this was a high-stakes situation of really hoping i'd like the book so i could wear the hat.
my life is so hard.
fortunately, it's good news.
nothing much of anything happened in this book, which is a compliment. i plodded through it and felt immersed in a world of surveillance and clumsy dual motivations, unglamorous rural life and glamorous-on-paper jobs.
this is the kind of book that is full of things you google instead of action, which is my preference.
bottom line: my first rachel kushner but it won't be my last!
(thanks to the publisher for the copy)
September 4, 2024
it should be a crime punishable by death to bore me so badly with a philosophical thriller set in france
July 30, 2024
Now Longlisted for the Booker 2024
Rachel Kushner is that cool girl novelist who's also deeply smart and thoughtful. This book is closer to than but what they all share is an anarchic energy and a wayward trajectory epitomised by an unruly, unbound female protagonist-narrator (I'm discounting here Kushner's finding-her-feet-as-a-writer book ).
Kushner's women have a kind of androgyny about them: they're sexy - here self-consciously and manipulatively so - but they also operate in environments that are more often gendered masculine: here as an ex-FBI-style agent now independent and possibly a bit rogue; in other books as part of a motorbike speed-racing group, and in prison.
The mood of this novel is unmoored: 'Sadie Smith', our protagonist, is operating under a pseudonym as she infiltrates a kind of eco-commune in France who may or may not be planning acts of violence. But Sadie's clients are shadowy and morally questionable - is she working for a government agency or for big corporate business interests who want to paint protesters as criminals and terrorists?
This sense of disorientation permeates the text and is complicated by the presence of Bruno's voice: a man with a troubling twentieth century past whose theories of Neanderthal man and whose retreat into the caves of France paint him initially as something between a crank and a cult guru but whose thoughts on how to live under late-stage capitalism form a parallel narrative to the main storyline - and seem to become increasingly judicious and perceptive.
This is not, I'd say, a book for readers who want a clear pull-through and who are uncomfortable with ambiguities at all levels. But for me, this is a fascinating exploration of where we are today, where we have come from and how we might be at a form of crossroads in terms of where our future lies. All that wrapped up (but never neatly or tidily) in a questing, searching, probing narrative that asks serious questions without making itself earnest.
Yep, Kushner is right up there on my list of exciting writers working today.
Many thanks to Random House, Vintage for an ARC via NetGalley
We've ceased to locate ourselves in a larger system, a grand design. We've cut the rope, my children.
Rachel Kushner is that cool girl novelist who's also deeply smart and thoughtful. This book is closer to than but what they all share is an anarchic energy and a wayward trajectory epitomised by an unruly, unbound female protagonist-narrator (I'm discounting here Kushner's finding-her-feet-as-a-writer book ).
Kushner's women have a kind of androgyny about them: they're sexy - here self-consciously and manipulatively so - but they also operate in environments that are more often gendered masculine: here as an ex-FBI-style agent now independent and possibly a bit rogue; in other books as part of a motorbike speed-racing group, and in prison.
The mood of this novel is unmoored: 'Sadie Smith', our protagonist, is operating under a pseudonym as she infiltrates a kind of eco-commune in France who may or may not be planning acts of violence. But Sadie's clients are shadowy and morally questionable - is she working for a government agency or for big corporate business interests who want to paint protesters as criminals and terrorists?
This sense of disorientation permeates the text and is complicated by the presence of Bruno's voice: a man with a troubling twentieth century past whose theories of Neanderthal man and whose retreat into the caves of France paint him initially as something between a crank and a cult guru but whose thoughts on how to live under late-stage capitalism form a parallel narrative to the main storyline - and seem to become increasingly judicious and perceptive.
This is not, I'd say, a book for readers who want a clear pull-through and who are uncomfortable with ambiguities at all levels. But for me, this is a fascinating exploration of where we are today, where we have come from and how we might be at a form of crossroads in terms of where our future lies. All that wrapped up (but never neatly or tidily) in a questing, searching, probing narrative that asks serious questions without making itself earnest.
Yep, Kushner is right up there on my list of exciting writers working today.
Many thanks to Random House, Vintage for an ARC via NetGalley
September 21, 2024
Rachel Kushner � I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance! This is so good, guys! I picked up a discarded copy of The Flamethrowers a few months ago (why the hell was it discarded, I now ask myself!), but hadn’t yet read it. Then this one passed through my hands, and I couldn’t resist � the title, the cover, and the jacket blurb hooked me. The first page had me checking it out and bringing it home.
“Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said. He said they were prone to addiction, too, and especially smoking.�
I had to know why a novel about a thirty-four-year-old woman, an American secret agent sent to a rural commune in France, would begin with this peculiar statement about Neanderthals. Well, to be honest, I sort of guessed the link between this area of France and its prehistoric caves and the Neanderthals, thanks to Beebe Bahrami, author of Café Neandertal. However, I was super curious about Kushner’s angle by bringing up the Neanderthals in the very first sentence. If you haven’t guessed already, I’ll warn you now: this is not a typical spy thriller. But� it had me turning the pages and itching to get back to it whenever I had to set it aside. And it’s funny too, in a gloriously subtle but snarky kind of way. After reading that first sentence, nearly 150 pages later the narrator, “Sadie�, tells us this:
“I used to smoke, perhaps on account of some percentage of Neanderthal in my lineage, although I’ll never know what percentage, not wanting my DNA in any database.�
If weird little things like that make you snicker too, then we just might get along. I’m not really explaining the point of the Neanderthals here though. See, Sadie has been sent by some shadowy private sector group to infiltrate an organization of rural activists, the Moulinards, in the region to find proof of sabotage and further plans of possible subversions. Bruno Lacombe, through email communications, is a mentor to the group. Sadie, in turn, has access to these communications. Bruno Lacombe is thoroughly immersed, perhaps obsessed is a better term, with the Neanderthals and the ancient way of life. He blames Homo sapiens for the mess we are in. Lately, it’s not too hard to get on board with his way of thinking.
“The use of fire for harm instead of good seems to have taken hold, suspiciously, and damningly, just as the Neanderthals began to disappear and Homo sapiens rose up, an interglacial bully who shaped the world we’re stuck with.�
Another word about Sadie. She doesn’t give a shit about anyone, except for Sadie. And that’s what makes her such a fantastic character. I mean, we all care, arguably in varying degrees, for our fellow humans. But don’t you sometimes wish � admit it! � that you could care just a little bit less?! Okay, perhaps I’d just like to be Sadie for a day. Or two. She’s the sort of person you might also run into in a Marcy Dermansky or Ottessa Moshfegh novel, minus the undercover agent skills. She has no background that we know of, besides some previous undercover work. She has no friends or loved ones � except for those she feigns an interest in. Sex is used to get what she needs � usually more information. She’s messy, she has “conventional� looks, she likes her beer a bit too much perhaps, and she’s irreverent.
“I try to be respectful of other women’s shortcomings. The dumb luck of good looks is akin to the fact that it may very well rain on the sea in times of drought, and will not rain where it is needed, on a farmer’s crops: grace is random, dumb and random and even a bit violent, in giving to the one who already has rather a lot, and taking from the one who has been denied, who doesn’t have a pot to piss in.�
We learn a bit more about Sadie through her very remote connection to Bruno. She gets closer to him by reading his thoughts on mankind and the stars and the underground world of caves. Her preoccupation with Bruno’s emails allows us to see under her skin, if that’s even possible. I, for one, caught a glimpse of a beating heart.
As an aside, I pay little attention to prize nominees, or winners for that matter. I hadn’t been aware this was on the Booker longlist when I brought it home. And it’s a complete coincidence that I’m writing this right after the shortlist was announced! In fact, I was mid-review when I scrolled through Instagram and saw the post. Read this. It’s intelligent, invigorating, funny, and refreshingly different from the usual reading fare.
“Coincidence is a term you choose for the good work it does to cover what some part of you knows, but a part that cannot be allowed to speak. The coincidence, as an explanation for things that are mysteriously aligned, is hiding what is not a coincidence and is instead a plot.�
“Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said. He said they were prone to addiction, too, and especially smoking.�
I had to know why a novel about a thirty-four-year-old woman, an American secret agent sent to a rural commune in France, would begin with this peculiar statement about Neanderthals. Well, to be honest, I sort of guessed the link between this area of France and its prehistoric caves and the Neanderthals, thanks to Beebe Bahrami, author of Café Neandertal. However, I was super curious about Kushner’s angle by bringing up the Neanderthals in the very first sentence. If you haven’t guessed already, I’ll warn you now: this is not a typical spy thriller. But� it had me turning the pages and itching to get back to it whenever I had to set it aside. And it’s funny too, in a gloriously subtle but snarky kind of way. After reading that first sentence, nearly 150 pages later the narrator, “Sadie�, tells us this:
“I used to smoke, perhaps on account of some percentage of Neanderthal in my lineage, although I’ll never know what percentage, not wanting my DNA in any database.�
If weird little things like that make you snicker too, then we just might get along. I’m not really explaining the point of the Neanderthals here though. See, Sadie has been sent by some shadowy private sector group to infiltrate an organization of rural activists, the Moulinards, in the region to find proof of sabotage and further plans of possible subversions. Bruno Lacombe, through email communications, is a mentor to the group. Sadie, in turn, has access to these communications. Bruno Lacombe is thoroughly immersed, perhaps obsessed is a better term, with the Neanderthals and the ancient way of life. He blames Homo sapiens for the mess we are in. Lately, it’s not too hard to get on board with his way of thinking.
“The use of fire for harm instead of good seems to have taken hold, suspiciously, and damningly, just as the Neanderthals began to disappear and Homo sapiens rose up, an interglacial bully who shaped the world we’re stuck with.�
Another word about Sadie. She doesn’t give a shit about anyone, except for Sadie. And that’s what makes her such a fantastic character. I mean, we all care, arguably in varying degrees, for our fellow humans. But don’t you sometimes wish � admit it! � that you could care just a little bit less?! Okay, perhaps I’d just like to be Sadie for a day. Or two. She’s the sort of person you might also run into in a Marcy Dermansky or Ottessa Moshfegh novel, minus the undercover agent skills. She has no background that we know of, besides some previous undercover work. She has no friends or loved ones � except for those she feigns an interest in. Sex is used to get what she needs � usually more information. She’s messy, she has “conventional� looks, she likes her beer a bit too much perhaps, and she’s irreverent.
“I try to be respectful of other women’s shortcomings. The dumb luck of good looks is akin to the fact that it may very well rain on the sea in times of drought, and will not rain where it is needed, on a farmer’s crops: grace is random, dumb and random and even a bit violent, in giving to the one who already has rather a lot, and taking from the one who has been denied, who doesn’t have a pot to piss in.�
We learn a bit more about Sadie through her very remote connection to Bruno. She gets closer to him by reading his thoughts on mankind and the stars and the underground world of caves. Her preoccupation with Bruno’s emails allows us to see under her skin, if that’s even possible. I, for one, caught a glimpse of a beating heart.
As an aside, I pay little attention to prize nominees, or winners for that matter. I hadn’t been aware this was on the Booker longlist when I brought it home. And it’s a complete coincidence that I’m writing this right after the shortlist was announced! In fact, I was mid-review when I scrolled through Instagram and saw the post. Read this. It’s intelligent, invigorating, funny, and refreshingly different from the usual reading fare.
“Coincidence is a term you choose for the good work it does to cover what some part of you knows, but a part that cannot be allowed to speak. The coincidence, as an explanation for things that are mysteriously aligned, is hiding what is not a coincidence and is instead a plot.�
November 2, 2024
DNF @ page 170.
I thought this started off with some promise. Also, I was a bit excited because many of my GR friends (and others) loved this.
I’m not really sure what the point is here. For sure, the emails about Neanderthals are interesting, but the characters in the (spy) story seem half baked. The story is vague and uneven, and some of the writing is too smart by half.
I didn’t like this at all.
I thought this started off with some promise. Also, I was a bit excited because many of my GR friends (and others) loved this.
I’m not really sure what the point is here. For sure, the emails about Neanderthals are interesting, but the characters in the (spy) story seem half baked. The story is vague and uneven, and some of the writing is too smart by half.
I didn’t like this at all.
August 20, 2024
Forty thousand years too late, Neanderthals are finally getting a chance to stand erectus and take a bow. Apparently, our uni-browed cousins weren’t dumb jerks like your brother-in-law, dragging their hairy knuckles across the den. Not at all. According to “Kindred� (2020), a fascinating book by archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Neanderthals used tools, made clothes and may have told stories and honored their dead. “They were state-of-the-art humans,� Sykes writes, “just of a different sort.�
In the 19th century, it felt easy to look down on these genetic neighbors of a different sort. After all, as the result of prehistory’s greatest mano-a-manoish battle, we won the deed to planet Earth. But in the early 21st century, Homo sapiens have lost their swagger. For all the wonders of modern culture � driverless cars, CRISPR, Taylor Swift � many of us fear we’re on the cusp of burning ourselves up.
Could the humble Neanderthals, who still lurk in our DNA, hold the secret to a better life? For Rachel Kushner’s new novel, “Creation Lake,� that question is the woolly mammoth in the room.
Since her 2008 debut, “Telex from Cuba,� Kushner has proved to be one of America’s most intellectually curious novelists, capable of interrogating radical political and cultural ideas in strikingly original plots. Her terrific 2013 novel, “The Flamethrowers,� roared through the world of avant-garde art. And now, “Creation Lake� � longlisted for the Booker Prize � bears all the hallmarks of her inquisitive mind and creative daring.
The first satisfying surprise is that Kushner has designed this story as a spy thriller laced with a killer dose of deadpan wit. The narrator, currently using the nom de guerre Sadie Smith, is an agent of chaos. Fired from her job with U.S. intelligence, she’s now working for the highest bidder. “It was a relief to be in the private sector,� she says, “where there are no supervising officers, no logbooks, and no...
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
In the 19th century, it felt easy to look down on these genetic neighbors of a different sort. After all, as the result of prehistory’s greatest mano-a-manoish battle, we won the deed to planet Earth. But in the early 21st century, Homo sapiens have lost their swagger. For all the wonders of modern culture � driverless cars, CRISPR, Taylor Swift � many of us fear we’re on the cusp of burning ourselves up.
Could the humble Neanderthals, who still lurk in our DNA, hold the secret to a better life? For Rachel Kushner’s new novel, “Creation Lake,� that question is the woolly mammoth in the room.
Since her 2008 debut, “Telex from Cuba,� Kushner has proved to be one of America’s most intellectually curious novelists, capable of interrogating radical political and cultural ideas in strikingly original plots. Her terrific 2013 novel, “The Flamethrowers,� roared through the world of avant-garde art. And now, “Creation Lake� � longlisted for the Booker Prize � bears all the hallmarks of her inquisitive mind and creative daring.
The first satisfying surprise is that Kushner has designed this story as a spy thriller laced with a killer dose of deadpan wit. The narrator, currently using the nom de guerre Sadie Smith, is an agent of chaos. Fired from her job with U.S. intelligence, she’s now working for the highest bidder. “It was a relief to be in the private sector,� she says, “where there are no supervising officers, no logbooks, and no...
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
November 26, 2024
Shortlisted for the Booker prize 2024, quite surprised this novel instead of by was chosen
A mix of spy novel and philosophy about how Homo Sapiens became the dominant species on earth. Protest and genuine concerns are being hacked into and usurped, similar to how Neanderthalers were done dirty
Violence is a reasonable response to a certain kind of threat
In are transported to 2010s Southern France (with Get Lucky of Daft Punk as soundtrack popping up repeatedly), where people speak Occitan. Sadie Smith, American, cynical, 34, is our narrator. She is tasked with infiltrating a commune that is in the way of mega waterbassins, dedicated to monocrop corn farming. Already once too enthusiastic for the FBI in inciting activists, she is now freelance and can use more dirty tricks to upend the commune. The philosophy part are from a mysterious Bruno, who lives in a cave and reminisces about Neanderthals in ever more wildly theoretical emails which form nearly half of the novel.
Then we also have a sub minister for agriculture slated for a visit, together with a thinly veiled , forming a catalyst for Sadie to get the commune members into action.
I found the story rather slow for something branded as a spy novel. seems to acknowledge this as well, with on page 90 Sadie saying: It was time. Time to make something happen. Yet she only on page 150 meets the commune members. The first section of chapter 5, the Red and the Black, about the wartime experiences of Bruno, are quite touching, and Château de Gaumme’s bloody Cagot history is also really interesting, but somehow I found that the narrative just petered out a bit near the end of the book.
The complexity Sadie as main character offers, using sex to get her way, stealing and drinking while driving, yet also being looked down upon by the Paris elite and men in general and distrusted by women, is definitely the highlight of the book. She is a pawn of capitalism but also manages to exploit the patriarchy financially, making her a compelling main character. it is hard to say for instance who exploits who in the dynamic between Lucien and Sadie.
While the email sections started off incredibly strong (with this banger of an opening sentence: Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said. He said they were prone to addiction, too, and especially smoking.) the whole theme of reality and fiction we tell about history and against the mainstream narrative never became more than conceptually interesting. I did find Bruno expounding on his formative experiences in the war, including him finding a dead German soldier and losing his family in concentration camps, ending up Oliver Twist like in Paris after the war, interesting, but that was unfortunately only a small part of these sections.
Naivety is punished in this novel and anyone believing in a clean cult in opposition to capitalism will be disappointed. It hardly mattered if the eco people ever, or even, meant harm. Their protest and genuine concerns are being hacked and usurped, similar to how Neanderthalers were by Homo Sapiens.
A book I can admire more intellectually than that I loved it while reading it.
Quotes:
Charisma doesn’t originate inside the person called “charismatic�. It comes from the need of others that special people exist.
Stealing puts reality in sharper relief.
Currently, he said, we are headed toward extinction in a shiny, driverless car, and the question is: How do we exit this car?
I am a better driver after a few drinks, more focused.
Certain crimes are natural enough, even serious ones. Murder is understandable if you think about it.
He believed he deserved to fall in love (everyone believes they deserve this) and, in his specific case, with someone like me.
He had not changed the world. Instead, he had merely become famous.
Vito announced that I had trampled on his dream.
I told him that’s what dreams are for.
But Smith isn’t even a name. It’s a place holder.
Violence is a reasonable response to a certain kind of threat
Adulthood had sanded him into someone profoundly unremarkable.
Love confirms who a person is, and that they are worth loving. Politics do not confirm who a person is.
Renouncing individuality, that’s for rich kids
Part of what I appreciate about you, Burdmoore, is your directness and your simplicity of mind.
You fight for a lost status quo, he said, and your victory is what?
A slightly more functional capitalist relation.
That’s all.
2024 Booker prize personal ranking, shortlisted books in bold:
1. Held (4.5*) - Review: /review/show...
2. Playground (4.5*) - Review: /review/show...
3. James (4*) - Review: /review/show...
4. Wandering Stars (4*) - Review: /review/show...
5. Headshot (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
6. The Safekeep (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
7. My Friends (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
8. Stone Yard Devotional (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
9. This Strange and Eventful History (3*) - Review: /review/show...
10. Creation Lake (3*) - Review: /review/show...
11. Enlightenment (3*) - Review: /review/show...
12. Orbital (2.5*) - Review: /review/show...
13. Wild Houses (2.5*) - Review: /review/show...
A mix of spy novel and philosophy about how Homo Sapiens became the dominant species on earth. Protest and genuine concerns are being hacked into and usurped, similar to how Neanderthalers were done dirty
Violence is a reasonable response to a certain kind of threat
In are transported to 2010s Southern France (with Get Lucky of Daft Punk as soundtrack popping up repeatedly), where people speak Occitan. Sadie Smith, American, cynical, 34, is our narrator. She is tasked with infiltrating a commune that is in the way of mega waterbassins, dedicated to monocrop corn farming. Already once too enthusiastic for the FBI in inciting activists, she is now freelance and can use more dirty tricks to upend the commune. The philosophy part are from a mysterious Bruno, who lives in a cave and reminisces about Neanderthals in ever more wildly theoretical emails which form nearly half of the novel.
Then we also have a sub minister for agriculture slated for a visit, together with a thinly veiled , forming a catalyst for Sadie to get the commune members into action.
I found the story rather slow for something branded as a spy novel. seems to acknowledge this as well, with on page 90 Sadie saying: It was time. Time to make something happen. Yet she only on page 150 meets the commune members. The first section of chapter 5, the Red and the Black, about the wartime experiences of Bruno, are quite touching, and Château de Gaumme’s bloody Cagot history is also really interesting, but somehow I found that the narrative just petered out a bit near the end of the book.
The complexity Sadie as main character offers, using sex to get her way, stealing and drinking while driving, yet also being looked down upon by the Paris elite and men in general and distrusted by women, is definitely the highlight of the book. She is a pawn of capitalism but also manages to exploit the patriarchy financially, making her a compelling main character. it is hard to say for instance who exploits who in the dynamic between Lucien and Sadie.
While the email sections started off incredibly strong (with this banger of an opening sentence: Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said. He said they were prone to addiction, too, and especially smoking.) the whole theme of reality and fiction we tell about history and against the mainstream narrative never became more than conceptually interesting. I did find Bruno expounding on his formative experiences in the war, including him finding a dead German soldier and losing his family in concentration camps, ending up Oliver Twist like in Paris after the war, interesting, but that was unfortunately only a small part of these sections.
Naivety is punished in this novel and anyone believing in a clean cult in opposition to capitalism will be disappointed. It hardly mattered if the eco people ever, or even, meant harm. Their protest and genuine concerns are being hacked and usurped, similar to how Neanderthalers were by Homo Sapiens.
A book I can admire more intellectually than that I loved it while reading it.
Quotes:
Charisma doesn’t originate inside the person called “charismatic�. It comes from the need of others that special people exist.
Stealing puts reality in sharper relief.
Currently, he said, we are headed toward extinction in a shiny, driverless car, and the question is: How do we exit this car?
I am a better driver after a few drinks, more focused.
Certain crimes are natural enough, even serious ones. Murder is understandable if you think about it.
He believed he deserved to fall in love (everyone believes they deserve this) and, in his specific case, with someone like me.
He had not changed the world. Instead, he had merely become famous.
Vito announced that I had trampled on his dream.
I told him that’s what dreams are for.
But Smith isn’t even a name. It’s a place holder.
Violence is a reasonable response to a certain kind of threat
Adulthood had sanded him into someone profoundly unremarkable.
Love confirms who a person is, and that they are worth loving. Politics do not confirm who a person is.
Renouncing individuality, that’s for rich kids
Part of what I appreciate about you, Burdmoore, is your directness and your simplicity of mind.
You fight for a lost status quo, he said, and your victory is what?
A slightly more functional capitalist relation.
That’s all.
2024 Booker prize personal ranking, shortlisted books in bold:
1. Held (4.5*) - Review: /review/show...
2. Playground (4.5*) - Review: /review/show...
3. James (4*) - Review: /review/show...
4. Wandering Stars (4*) - Review: /review/show...
5. Headshot (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
6. The Safekeep (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
7. My Friends (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
8. Stone Yard Devotional (3.5*) - Review: /review/show...
9. This Strange and Eventful History (3*) - Review: /review/show...
10. Creation Lake (3*) - Review: /review/show...
11. Enlightenment (3*) - Review: /review/show...
12. Orbital (2.5*) - Review: /review/show...
13. Wild Houses (2.5*) - Review: /review/show...
September 18, 2024
[4.5+]
Booker Shortlist 2024
“…when you attempt to escape the world, to leave it behind, you bring things with you.�
Our unnamed narrator is an American spy. Current alias Sadie Smith worked for the FBI as an undercover agent, but was fired after an undesirable outcome on a case. She has a facility for languages, and is now freelancing for shadowy types in the private sector. The case at the center of this story is in the Guyenne region of France, where “Sadie� needs to infiltrate anarchic eco-activists who are conspiring to prevent their small farming community from going corporate. Her role is to find out whether they plan on acts of terrorism.
We start in media res, where “Sadie� has already taken up residence with target-adjacent Lucien, in a big farmhouse. She cringes every time she has sex with him, but this is the price she is willing to pay for access. As a spy, she’s a natural chameleon, a smart cookie, daring, and self-contained. Her life is one of subterfuge and delusion—her second skin-- that she may not even comprehend her own motives by now. Moreover, she seems to have a growing drinking problem, which kept me on edge while reading.
Creation Lake is less an espionage story than it is an identity story---Sadie discovering things about herself (and how our ancestors stamped us) that she wasn’t anticipating, her outlook and core beliefs. The Le Moulin anarchists have a spiritual and intellectual leader, Bruno Lacombe, who lives in a cave and sends his distillation of thought and philosophy by email. Sadie has hacked into these emails from Bruno to another leader, Pascal Balmy. In this iteration--her spy costume this time--she is a translator, and Lucien intends to hook her up with Pascal and his comrades to translate a book they anonymously wrote.
During her stay, “Sadie� connects to Bruno’s ideology of the ancient past as a way to understand and approach today’s problems and foster a better future. He talks about the Thal (Neanderthal) and other human-esque species preceding the Thal. Bruno believes we can learn from them. He has a startling insight into the cave paintings at Lascaux and other illustrations in other caves. I’ll leave that for the reader to discover.
I admit that, while reading, I thought there were several siloed threads that weren’t clearly related. Sadie’s past, murky AF; the current target; and the agendas of many characters who populate this group of activists---they seemed to be floating out there, but without a precise connection. There are also a few risky moves on Sadie’s part, in furtherance of her own desires. She is sleek when she treats the subversives transactionally. We aren’t supposed to necessarily fathom the raw Sadie, her lack of morals and pronounced, consummate capitalism. There are times she appears to be tearing herself down in order to rebuild, and is often blind to her own flaws.
The book is about Sadie’s evolution; the spy identity is a vehicle for transformation and adds tension to the story. Bruno elegantly exhorts his followers to think bigger, like reading the stars the way a sailor would read the sea. Sadie is touched by the celestial matters that Bruno waxes on about.
Kushner’s gorgeous prose elevates this novel (and all her novels) to a step that’s out of Time. In talking metaphorically about technology, Bruno states, “Cave frequencies…are not three to thirty megahertz. Cave bandwidth crosses moments, eras, epochs, eons. You have to learn to go inside the monophony, to tease it apart. Eventually, you uncover an extraordinary polyphony…There’s a feeling that everyone is here.� There’s a bit of here, in that there’s an underground, radical movement in which the protagonist is involved, looking for identity and also making herself a conduit for the people she meets. In Creation Lake, she plays one person off of another.
Learning about Sadie is a novel’s worth—she’s a lot to unpack, and it is through the other figures that we learn about her character. It’s hard to parse because our own moral compass can get in the way of apprehending her. But, through her personal (and interpersonal) behaviors and actions, and the conduct of the activists, and, of course, Bruno, there’s room to grasp the indeterminate and enigmatic Sadie/not Sadie.
Thank you to Simon and Schuster for sending me a finished copy for review.
Booker Shortlist 2024
“…when you attempt to escape the world, to leave it behind, you bring things with you.�
Our unnamed narrator is an American spy. Current alias Sadie Smith worked for the FBI as an undercover agent, but was fired after an undesirable outcome on a case. She has a facility for languages, and is now freelancing for shadowy types in the private sector. The case at the center of this story is in the Guyenne region of France, where “Sadie� needs to infiltrate anarchic eco-activists who are conspiring to prevent their small farming community from going corporate. Her role is to find out whether they plan on acts of terrorism.
We start in media res, where “Sadie� has already taken up residence with target-adjacent Lucien, in a big farmhouse. She cringes every time she has sex with him, but this is the price she is willing to pay for access. As a spy, she’s a natural chameleon, a smart cookie, daring, and self-contained. Her life is one of subterfuge and delusion—her second skin-- that she may not even comprehend her own motives by now. Moreover, she seems to have a growing drinking problem, which kept me on edge while reading.
Creation Lake is less an espionage story than it is an identity story---Sadie discovering things about herself (and how our ancestors stamped us) that she wasn’t anticipating, her outlook and core beliefs. The Le Moulin anarchists have a spiritual and intellectual leader, Bruno Lacombe, who lives in a cave and sends his distillation of thought and philosophy by email. Sadie has hacked into these emails from Bruno to another leader, Pascal Balmy. In this iteration--her spy costume this time--she is a translator, and Lucien intends to hook her up with Pascal and his comrades to translate a book they anonymously wrote.
During her stay, “Sadie� connects to Bruno’s ideology of the ancient past as a way to understand and approach today’s problems and foster a better future. He talks about the Thal (Neanderthal) and other human-esque species preceding the Thal. Bruno believes we can learn from them. He has a startling insight into the cave paintings at Lascaux and other illustrations in other caves. I’ll leave that for the reader to discover.
I admit that, while reading, I thought there were several siloed threads that weren’t clearly related. Sadie’s past, murky AF; the current target; and the agendas of many characters who populate this group of activists---they seemed to be floating out there, but without a precise connection. There are also a few risky moves on Sadie’s part, in furtherance of her own desires. She is sleek when she treats the subversives transactionally. We aren’t supposed to necessarily fathom the raw Sadie, her lack of morals and pronounced, consummate capitalism. There are times she appears to be tearing herself down in order to rebuild, and is often blind to her own flaws.
The book is about Sadie’s evolution; the spy identity is a vehicle for transformation and adds tension to the story. Bruno elegantly exhorts his followers to think bigger, like reading the stars the way a sailor would read the sea. Sadie is touched by the celestial matters that Bruno waxes on about.
Kushner’s gorgeous prose elevates this novel (and all her novels) to a step that’s out of Time. In talking metaphorically about technology, Bruno states, “Cave frequencies…are not three to thirty megahertz. Cave bandwidth crosses moments, eras, epochs, eons. You have to learn to go inside the monophony, to tease it apart. Eventually, you uncover an extraordinary polyphony…There’s a feeling that everyone is here.� There’s a bit of here, in that there’s an underground, radical movement in which the protagonist is involved, looking for identity and also making herself a conduit for the people she meets. In Creation Lake, she plays one person off of another.
Learning about Sadie is a novel’s worth—she’s a lot to unpack, and it is through the other figures that we learn about her character. It’s hard to parse because our own moral compass can get in the way of apprehending her. But, through her personal (and interpersonal) behaviors and actions, and the conduct of the activists, and, of course, Bruno, there’s room to grasp the indeterminate and enigmatic Sadie/not Sadie.
Thank you to Simon and Schuster for sending me a finished copy for review.
October 13, 2024
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024
Nominated for the National Book Award 2024
Come for the story, stay for the messy female protagonist: Much like , Kushner excels in writing complex women that are not crafted to be sympathetic or to function as identification figures. But where Moshfegh investigates extreme aesthetics of disgust and alienation, Kushner takes a more direct political approach. My favorite is still which deals with violence, classism and trauma and also has the most captivating plot, but while ' slightly convoluted story line tended to aggravate me, I still loved the messy female artist who serves as the protagonist.
And now Kushner twists French noir, giving us a hard-drinking female spy as a narrator. Moving from Italian anarchists () to French leftist thinkers around , Kushner's latest protagonist, 34-year-old American Sadie Smith (not her real name), aims to infiltrate the anarchist eco-commune "Le Moulin" around Bruno Lacombe which is located in the limestone regions of southern France. Lacombe rambles to his followers about the Neanderthals and spits conspiracy theories, the group is accused of sabotaging capitalist ventures they deem to harm the environment.
But this is not another book about climate change, the destruction of the environment, extremist bubbles, or the importance of framing narratives, no: It's strong when it illuminates the language PhD drop out and now spy-for-hire known as Sadie. She seems to like her job, she is unscrupulous and cold, she employs her beauty to get her job done, but her psychological turmoil prompted by a feeling of emptiness shines through the cracks of her narration. Her ruminations, often inspired by her astute observations, reveal a grim world-view that reflect a disillusionment with humans in general. To her, ideological belief systems are just another quirk.
What really bothered me though was the extensive reflection of Bruno's ideas: The essayistic endeavors that overwhelm the book show a lack of interest in plot, which is not a problem per se, but the theorizing just didn't captivate me enough. Extra points though for the connection to Houellebecq's , very smartly done. Overall, an interesting effort, that, for my taste, goes slightly overboard.
Nominated for the National Book Award 2024
Come for the story, stay for the messy female protagonist: Much like , Kushner excels in writing complex women that are not crafted to be sympathetic or to function as identification figures. But where Moshfegh investigates extreme aesthetics of disgust and alienation, Kushner takes a more direct political approach. My favorite is still which deals with violence, classism and trauma and also has the most captivating plot, but while ' slightly convoluted story line tended to aggravate me, I still loved the messy female artist who serves as the protagonist.
And now Kushner twists French noir, giving us a hard-drinking female spy as a narrator. Moving from Italian anarchists () to French leftist thinkers around , Kushner's latest protagonist, 34-year-old American Sadie Smith (not her real name), aims to infiltrate the anarchist eco-commune "Le Moulin" around Bruno Lacombe which is located in the limestone regions of southern France. Lacombe rambles to his followers about the Neanderthals and spits conspiracy theories, the group is accused of sabotaging capitalist ventures they deem to harm the environment.
But this is not another book about climate change, the destruction of the environment, extremist bubbles, or the importance of framing narratives, no: It's strong when it illuminates the language PhD drop out and now spy-for-hire known as Sadie. She seems to like her job, she is unscrupulous and cold, she employs her beauty to get her job done, but her psychological turmoil prompted by a feeling of emptiness shines through the cracks of her narration. Her ruminations, often inspired by her astute observations, reveal a grim world-view that reflect a disillusionment with humans in general. To her, ideological belief systems are just another quirk.
What really bothered me though was the extensive reflection of Bruno's ideas: The essayistic endeavors that overwhelm the book show a lack of interest in plot, which is not a problem per se, but the theorizing just didn't captivate me enough. Extra points though for the connection to Houellebecq's , very smartly done. Overall, an interesting effort, that, for my taste, goes slightly overboard.
September 2, 2024
First off, many thanks to Netgalley and Scribner for providing me with an ARC, in exchange for this honest review.
Of her previous works, I've only read Kushner's OTHER Booker nominated novel, , and this is much different - but had some of the same qualities and 'issues' that I experienced with that one. On the plus side - the story is unusual and often thrilling and intellectually stimulating; and the author writes really great prose and injects some much-needed humor into some fairly dire situations. Although somewhat reminiscent of , it is much more philosophical and contemplative, and - for good or ill - lacks that book's Tarantino-esque flashes of ultra-violence.
Most of the 'problems' I encountered are more an 'It's not you, it's me' situation - there are LOTS of characters and many of them are so briefly defined that I had trouble keeping them all str8; luckily, since I read it on the Kindle, I made excellent use of the search feature - I'd have been completely lost with a hardcopy.
But other than the protagonist 'Sadie Smith' (not her real name!) and the other major character of Bruno Lacombe - who we mainly come to know through his email messages to the commune that Sadie is infiltrating - and may or may NOT otherwise make an appearance in the book itself - most of the other characters are fairly one-dimensional; and even Sadie and Bruno are so enigmatic that they are hard to grasp (which is kinda the point ... I think!).
I also didn't really cotton to the book's structure either- which is rendered mainly in brief passages that jump around in time and topic, again making it difficult for me to follow and put pieces together (Hey, I'm old and my brain is slow!!). The clues as to what is actually transpiring are doled out in drips and drabs, and I am still not sure I quite 'got it' all.
Interspersed with these short passages are longer diatribes that deal with philosophical, anthropological, and astronomical topics - these were usually quite interesting and relevant, although sometimes they seemed to be shoehorned in just so we knew Kushner is a LOT brighter than us mere mortals.
Regardless, I think it made for an intriguing and thought-provoking read, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Kushner winds up on the shortlist once again. As it's the first of the Booker longlist for me to read, I am not quite sure of its chances of taking the prize, however. Should it win, I'd be tempted to reread it to see what I might have missed the first go-round.
PS: Oh, and BTW - Kushner entitles a chapter 'Lemon Incest' and in it talks about this infamous French song by that name - I had never heard it (or OF it) before this, so had to scope it out - it IS rather shocking - and tres bizarre!! . The title, although obvs. alluding to incest itself, is actually a pun on the French for lemon zest: 'un zeste de citron'.
Of her previous works, I've only read Kushner's OTHER Booker nominated novel, , and this is much different - but had some of the same qualities and 'issues' that I experienced with that one. On the plus side - the story is unusual and often thrilling and intellectually stimulating; and the author writes really great prose and injects some much-needed humor into some fairly dire situations. Although somewhat reminiscent of , it is much more philosophical and contemplative, and - for good or ill - lacks that book's Tarantino-esque flashes of ultra-violence.
Most of the 'problems' I encountered are more an 'It's not you, it's me' situation - there are LOTS of characters and many of them are so briefly defined that I had trouble keeping them all str8; luckily, since I read it on the Kindle, I made excellent use of the search feature - I'd have been completely lost with a hardcopy.
But other than the protagonist 'Sadie Smith' (not her real name!) and the other major character of Bruno Lacombe - who we mainly come to know through his email messages to the commune that Sadie is infiltrating - and may or may NOT otherwise make an appearance in the book itself - most of the other characters are fairly one-dimensional; and even Sadie and Bruno are so enigmatic that they are hard to grasp (which is kinda the point ... I think!).
I also didn't really cotton to the book's structure either- which is rendered mainly in brief passages that jump around in time and topic, again making it difficult for me to follow and put pieces together (Hey, I'm old and my brain is slow!!). The clues as to what is actually transpiring are doled out in drips and drabs, and I am still not sure I quite 'got it' all.
Interspersed with these short passages are longer diatribes that deal with philosophical, anthropological, and astronomical topics - these were usually quite interesting and relevant, although sometimes they seemed to be shoehorned in just so we knew Kushner is a LOT brighter than us mere mortals.
Regardless, I think it made for an intriguing and thought-provoking read, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Kushner winds up on the shortlist once again. As it's the first of the Booker longlist for me to read, I am not quite sure of its chances of taking the prize, however. Should it win, I'd be tempted to reread it to see what I might have missed the first go-round.
PS: Oh, and BTW - Kushner entitles a chapter 'Lemon Incest' and in it talks about this infamous French song by that name - I had never heard it (or OF it) before this, so had to scope it out - it IS rather shocking - and tres bizarre!! . The title, although obvs. alluding to incest itself, is actually a pun on the French for lemon zest: 'un zeste de citron'.
August 9, 2024
2,5
I liked ‘The Mars Room� and ‘The Hard Crowd,� but I had some trouble with Kushner’s new book. This book is filled to the brim with information, theories and ideas about the Neanderthals, the Cagots, astrology etc. And even though Kushner is very smart and I admire her knowledge, I personally didn’t really care about all the anthropology. I would have liked to learn more about the characters and what motivated them, but I felt I hardly got to know them. Also, this was presented as a spy novel about eco-terrorism, but nothing much happens and except for the ending it wasn’t very thrilling.
Most people on ŷ seem to love it and maybe my expectations were just too high, but this was not my kind of book and I found myself to be rather disappointed.
Thank you Jonathan Cape and Netgalley UK for the ARC.
I liked ‘The Mars Room� and ‘The Hard Crowd,� but I had some trouble with Kushner’s new book. This book is filled to the brim with information, theories and ideas about the Neanderthals, the Cagots, astrology etc. And even though Kushner is very smart and I admire her knowledge, I personally didn’t really care about all the anthropology. I would have liked to learn more about the characters and what motivated them, but I felt I hardly got to know them. Also, this was presented as a spy novel about eco-terrorism, but nothing much happens and except for the ending it wasn’t very thrilling.
Most people on ŷ seem to love it and maybe my expectations were just too high, but this was not my kind of book and I found myself to be rather disappointed.
Thank you Jonathan Cape and Netgalley UK for the ARC.
March 26, 2025
Fascinatingly, my friends either found this amazing or completely uninteresting. I am solidly in the second camp.
(Please don't read the following, LCJ, Anniky, and Barbara K)
(Please don't read the following, LCJ, Anniky, and Barbara K)
September 7, 2024
What kept popping into my head while reading this book were two other favorites of mine. The oddball, skeptically mystical undercover female narrator brought to mind Sarah Gran's Claire DeWitt and the the City of the Dead, while the refusal of the plot to lie down and die was reminiscent of the classic private-eye novel The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley. To be compared to either is a compliment; that it reminded me of both is the highest praise.
This was, among (many) other things, an anti-romance novel. It is a story whose Happily Ever After depends on disconnection. Sex? Horrible. The author does not want a husband, or a bunch of besties, or even a personal history to look back on. She wants to swim, and walk on the cliffs, and live simply. In Creation Lake, we follow her on her journey, and she will not be an easy character to forget.
Although the novel is serious, it is also ridiculous, and often quite funny. (Note the chapter headings, and I've learned that descriptions of bad drivers can be every bit as funny as descriptions of bad meals.) It's a known characteristic of most novels that the first chapter is written, rewritten and rewritten again, polished to perfection, to set its hooks in the reader before the real story gets underway. In Kushner's hands, every chapter feels like the first. It's set in a grimy, rural France, where we don't encounter nattily dressed Frenchmen strolling the Grand Boulevards, but instead shrink-wrapped pallets of Nutella growing soft in the punishing sunlight of a Carrefour loading dock. Leftover radicals watching their world become more and more foreign by the day. Although the necessity of plot sometimes distracts the story from its bizarre worldview, there's always room for this sort of thing:
I loved every stinkin' page of this book. Except for p. 88.
This was, among (many) other things, an anti-romance novel. It is a story whose Happily Ever After depends on disconnection. Sex? Horrible. The author does not want a husband, or a bunch of besties, or even a personal history to look back on. She wants to swim, and walk on the cliffs, and live simply. In Creation Lake, we follow her on her journey, and she will not be an easy character to forget.
Although the novel is serious, it is also ridiculous, and often quite funny. (Note the chapter headings, and I've learned that descriptions of bad drivers can be every bit as funny as descriptions of bad meals.) It's a known characteristic of most novels that the first chapter is written, rewritten and rewritten again, polished to perfection, to set its hooks in the reader before the real story gets underway. In Kushner's hands, every chapter feels like the first. It's set in a grimy, rural France, where we don't encounter nattily dressed Frenchmen strolling the Grand Boulevards, but instead shrink-wrapped pallets of Nutella growing soft in the punishing sunlight of a Carrefour loading dock. Leftover radicals watching their world become more and more foreign by the day. Although the necessity of plot sometimes distracts the story from its bizarre worldview, there's always room for this sort of thing:
The narrator encounters a bitter radical named Nadia who's been ostracized from a commune, driving a beater car down a country highway. Our narrator accepts a ride. Nadia is hard-up and shamefacedly asking for help:You know, she could have set this book in Manitoba or Iowa, but Kushner's a miracle worker and this is an example of why. Not only does it deftly puncture the American ideal of France, but provides an excuse to think seriously about Neanderthals and early h. sapiens.
"It's a little one-story building with a black door. That's where I'm staying. When you come up, can you bring some food? Things have been tough for us."
"Us?"
"Me and Bernadette."
"Bernadette?"
"You can meet her."
She went around and opened her trunk.
There was a live pig in there, pinkish, coated in white bristles. It began to scrabble at the sight of Nadia, grunting and sniffing with its sheered-flat pig nose.
She clapped her hands one time and pointed.
The pig hurled itself up and over the lip of the trunk and landed on the ground, not on its feet like animals are supposed to, but it righted itself from its inelegant side-flop and stood watching her as if for further commands, sniffing with that nose that looked molded into the shape of a cup.
I loved every stinkin' page of this book. Except for p. 88.
August 30, 2024
An intelligent, carefully-crafted play on an existential thriller partly inspired by Rachel Kushner’s fascination with leftwing, French crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette. Set in 2013, Kushner’s narrative centres on an agent provocateur known, for now, as Sadie Smith. Ignominiously fired from her job as a covert operative for internal American intelligence, Sadie’s currently selling her services to the highest bidder. All we really know about Sadie is she’s 34, fluent in several European languages, and once embarked on a doctorate in rhetoric. The perfect background for her current assignment working for a shadowy grouping of powerful, monied figures. Sadie’s journey begins in Paris where she presents as the stereotypical, wide-eyed American abroad, rather like Sally in The Dud Avocado; but it’s a ruse that provides access to her targets through a complex process of seduction and infiltration.
Sadie’s expertise lies in environmental activism, what her employers would label eco-terrorism. She’s been charged to gain access to a communal farm overseen by faded politico Pascal Balmy who’s suspected of orchestrating a series of attacks on French infrastructure: forms of industrial sabotage intended to disrupt the forward march of agribusiness. During background surveillance, Sadie manages to hack Pascal’s email accounts, monitoring his contact with Bruno Lacombe a philosopher/anthropologist who’s retreated from the world, installing himself in a cave on his property close to Pascal’s group in southern France. Pascal and Bruno are both broadly anti-capitalist, direct descendants of the radicalism of May �68. But while Pascal remains convinced that capitalism can be fought from within, building on the situationist ideals of Guy Debord, Bruno’s drawn to a kind of anarcho-primitivist, anti-civilisation stance. He’s become obsessed with the paths not taken: prehistory and the culture of the Neanderthals, a “world before the fall, before class and domination.� For Bruno disrupting capitalism is no longer the answer, what’s needed is a shift in consciousness, to think beyond and outside it.
Although it’s effective read purely as a slightly-satirical variation on a conventional spy story, Kushner’s novel works well as a loose companion piece to her earlier The Flamethrowers: where that examined Italian leftist politics in the seventies, this could be viewed as an exploration of what came next. Kushner’s piece is impressively researched. She expertly interweaves fact and fiction indirectly referencing: Deleuze’s nomadism; key political texts like The Coming Insurrection, infamous journal Tiqqun; and elements of French social and political history from the climate change activism that led to the formation of Les Soulèvements de la Terre (Earth Uprising) to the fight for Larzac and the Tarnac Nine; violent police tactics and growing clashes over megabasin projects in rural France. Many of her fictional characters have real-life counterparts: Bruno parallels aspects of philosopher Bruno Latour; hapless politician Platon is a version of the controversial Manuel Valls; a prominent French novelist Michel Thomas conjures provocative author Michel Houellebecq. Thomas’s cameo also establishes a link to Houellebecq’s Serotonin which Kushner’s story sometimes overlaps.
Sadie’s an intriguing creation, world weary and cynical, she views the world as chaotic and ultimately lawless � she sometimes reminded me of Musil’s man without qualities. Like Reno in The Flamethrowers she often appears less engaged in action than in representing and interpreting everything around her. And like Reno years before, she soon realises women in far-left circles are routinely relegated to the periphery, the women of Pascal’s commune are mostly assigned to childcare and serving coffee. A situation that suits Sadie’s agenda, making her far less likely to be fingered as a potential saboteur. Although Sadie’s experiences will take her in a wholly unexpected direction, one which elegantly solves the mystery of Kushner’s ongoing juxtaposition of Bruno’s musings and Sadie’s activities. Although this may prove a little too dry for some readers, and I don't entirely agree with Kushner's underlying arguments, I found it surprisingly absorbing, ambitious and inventive.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Jonathan Cape for an ARC
Sadie’s expertise lies in environmental activism, what her employers would label eco-terrorism. She’s been charged to gain access to a communal farm overseen by faded politico Pascal Balmy who’s suspected of orchestrating a series of attacks on French infrastructure: forms of industrial sabotage intended to disrupt the forward march of agribusiness. During background surveillance, Sadie manages to hack Pascal’s email accounts, monitoring his contact with Bruno Lacombe a philosopher/anthropologist who’s retreated from the world, installing himself in a cave on his property close to Pascal’s group in southern France. Pascal and Bruno are both broadly anti-capitalist, direct descendants of the radicalism of May �68. But while Pascal remains convinced that capitalism can be fought from within, building on the situationist ideals of Guy Debord, Bruno’s drawn to a kind of anarcho-primitivist, anti-civilisation stance. He’s become obsessed with the paths not taken: prehistory and the culture of the Neanderthals, a “world before the fall, before class and domination.� For Bruno disrupting capitalism is no longer the answer, what’s needed is a shift in consciousness, to think beyond and outside it.
Although it’s effective read purely as a slightly-satirical variation on a conventional spy story, Kushner’s novel works well as a loose companion piece to her earlier The Flamethrowers: where that examined Italian leftist politics in the seventies, this could be viewed as an exploration of what came next. Kushner’s piece is impressively researched. She expertly interweaves fact and fiction indirectly referencing: Deleuze’s nomadism; key political texts like The Coming Insurrection, infamous journal Tiqqun; and elements of French social and political history from the climate change activism that led to the formation of Les Soulèvements de la Terre (Earth Uprising) to the fight for Larzac and the Tarnac Nine; violent police tactics and growing clashes over megabasin projects in rural France. Many of her fictional characters have real-life counterparts: Bruno parallels aspects of philosopher Bruno Latour; hapless politician Platon is a version of the controversial Manuel Valls; a prominent French novelist Michel Thomas conjures provocative author Michel Houellebecq. Thomas’s cameo also establishes a link to Houellebecq’s Serotonin which Kushner’s story sometimes overlaps.
Sadie’s an intriguing creation, world weary and cynical, she views the world as chaotic and ultimately lawless � she sometimes reminded me of Musil’s man without qualities. Like Reno in The Flamethrowers she often appears less engaged in action than in representing and interpreting everything around her. And like Reno years before, she soon realises women in far-left circles are routinely relegated to the periphery, the women of Pascal’s commune are mostly assigned to childcare and serving coffee. A situation that suits Sadie’s agenda, making her far less likely to be fingered as a potential saboteur. Although Sadie’s experiences will take her in a wholly unexpected direction, one which elegantly solves the mystery of Kushner’s ongoing juxtaposition of Bruno’s musings and Sadie’s activities. Although this may prove a little too dry for some readers, and I don't entirely agree with Kushner's underlying arguments, I found it surprisingly absorbing, ambitious and inventive.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Jonathan Cape for an ARC
October 21, 2024
as brandon taylor wrote in his review: “i couldn’t decide if the book was a smart person’s idea of a stupid book or a stupid person’s idea of a smart book.�
i will write a proper review soon, but this just didn’t work for me. i can appreciate some nihilistic, philosophical pondering, but i was just so bored and when i reached the end, i wasn’t sure if kushner had conveyed the message she wanted to, or if there was even one at all.
i will write a proper review soon, but this just didn’t work for me. i can appreciate some nihilistic, philosophical pondering, but i was just so bored and when i reached the end, i wasn’t sure if kushner had conveyed the message she wanted to, or if there was even one at all.
Shelved as 'abandoned'
September 28, 2024Ok, I tried the ebook and the audiobook but it did not grab my attention. Could not continue with the novel even if it was shortlisted for the Booker prize
October 9, 2024
4.0 Stars
Video Review
This was such a wonderfully unexpected novel. From the premise, I expected a slick, action packed spy novel full of the usual cliche action.
Instead I was so surprised to find this brilliant, razor sharp narrative. I loved the distinct voice of our female protagonist. It was such a good balance between humorous and biting.
The entire narrative is framed around the psychology of Neanderthals. It was the most obtuse juxtaposition and yet completely works.
I would highly recommend this novel to readers looking for an offbeat literary thriller.
Video Review
This was such a wonderfully unexpected novel. From the premise, I expected a slick, action packed spy novel full of the usual cliche action.
Instead I was so surprised to find this brilliant, razor sharp narrative. I loved the distinct voice of our female protagonist. It was such a good balance between humorous and biting.
The entire narrative is framed around the psychology of Neanderthals. It was the most obtuse juxtaposition and yet completely works.
I would highly recommend this novel to readers looking for an offbeat literary thriller.
October 6, 2024
It must be said: this is a stupid book full of bad ideas, undercooked characters, and silly sentences. I don't understand how a book like this gets big praise from so many professional reviewers. The themes about activism/primitivism were interesting at first, but ultimately only developed very shallowly. The plot is boring and cartoonish. The narrator is so incredibly unlikeable that I started to wonder if the book was an intentional farce. Are we supposed to think she is "cool"? Are we supposed to sympathize with her mission to sabotage utopian activist communities and land people in prison? Are we supposed to think that she's awesome because she has casual sex (shocking!) even as she entraps activists? If we are not supposed to like her, then why doesn't Kushner give us a more developed critique of her life/behavior, another character to see the world through? I love flawed characters, but outright villains who feel like a mishmash of stereotypes? The way that the activists are all portrayed as baffoons and the way the book ends feel like clear indications that we are, in fact, supposed to sympathize with the narrator. Is this some kind of lean-in feminism for CIA operatives? In short, everything in this book felt incredibly half-baked. All authors have underdeveloped stories like this lying around, I'm sure. But I'm surprised this one made it through to publication and is now, apparently, on the Booker Prize list. What's going on here? I guess I'm an outlier.
EDIT: I have since found this perfect critical review from Brandon Taylor in the London Review of Books:
"I mentioned to a friend that I was having a hard time with Sadie as a narrator because she seemed stupid and unaware that she was stupid, and my friend suggested that perhaps Kushner had done this on purpose, as a commentary on the ‘sharp woman� archetype that has predominated in the fiction of the last decade. Perhaps. I replied that I couldn’t decide if the book was a smart person’s idea of a stupid book or a stupid person’s idea of a smart book. But I’ve come to think that the larger problem with Sadie is the difficulty presented by a character who reminds you on every page that nothing matters and nothing is real, and that the people she is scamming are phonies too, that everything is empty and hollow and that she’s smarter than everyone else because she knows the game is a game and is playing to win, but only for mercenary reasons. It brings me back to the question, why did you write this? What are you exploring here?"
And he ends with this savage take: "The contemporary novel no longer has any saviours or knights or true prophets. We have only the exhausted media worker rolling onto their side just before their iPhone alarm blares in their face, scrolling memes for a little hit of dopamine. The spy novel is the cynical counterpart to the revolutionary novel. You could read Creation Lake as a brilliant commentary on the concept of the ‘spy� in contemporary life � if a spy is a person who creates a false self in order to achieve material comfort. Still, I would have preferred a novel."
EDIT: I have since found this perfect critical review from Brandon Taylor in the London Review of Books:
"I mentioned to a friend that I was having a hard time with Sadie as a narrator because she seemed stupid and unaware that she was stupid, and my friend suggested that perhaps Kushner had done this on purpose, as a commentary on the ‘sharp woman� archetype that has predominated in the fiction of the last decade. Perhaps. I replied that I couldn’t decide if the book was a smart person’s idea of a stupid book or a stupid person’s idea of a smart book. But I’ve come to think that the larger problem with Sadie is the difficulty presented by a character who reminds you on every page that nothing matters and nothing is real, and that the people she is scamming are phonies too, that everything is empty and hollow and that she’s smarter than everyone else because she knows the game is a game and is playing to win, but only for mercenary reasons. It brings me back to the question, why did you write this? What are you exploring here?"
And he ends with this savage take: "The contemporary novel no longer has any saviours or knights or true prophets. We have only the exhausted media worker rolling onto their side just before their iPhone alarm blares in their face, scrolling memes for a little hit of dopamine. The spy novel is the cynical counterpart to the revolutionary novel. You could read Creation Lake as a brilliant commentary on the concept of the ‘spy� in contemporary life � if a spy is a person who creates a false self in order to achieve material comfort. Still, I would have preferred a novel."
January 10, 2025
I enjoyed "Creation Lake" well enough but even after several weeks I’m not sure how I feel about it. I can understand the rave reviews on GR and elsewhere. I’m far less sympathetic with the London Review of Books write-up (“a sloppy book whose careless construction and totalising cynicism come to feel downright hostile� � don’t sugarcoat it, dude, tell us what you really think). I’m somewhere in-between, leaning toward the first group. I enjoyed the intellectual pleasure of trying to puzzle out what Kushner was trying to do, and yes, reading to find out what would happen to the protagonist. But all this wasn’t enough to put me in the camp of the 5-star givers.
There’s some wonderful stuff in the book: Ideas to ponder, evocative passages about the “Europe� of the mind and the Europe of reality, wry commentary on litigious societies and political movements, on identity and authenticity� And there is a story of intrigue and suspense running through the book -- the secret mission, will her cover be blown? will there be violence? -- but the story comes in second to the the sardonic, slightly misanthropic musings of the protagonist and the odd emails of a man who's forever offstage like a man-behind-the-curtain.
What it came down to for me in the end is that “Creation Lake� was too much head and very little heart. It was fun to deconstruct but it lacked humanity.
That’s my take, anyway. (Come to think of it, perhaps “totalising cynicism� isn’t entirely off base, though I'm not certain what it means.)
A few remarks:
The very first words in the book are: “Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said. He said they were prone to addiction, too, and especially smoking.�
Interesting opening. Not quite “Call me Ishmael,� but it does what it’s supposed to. You're going to want to read further. The oddness of it -- I defy anyone to read it without thinking "huh?" -- throws the reader to feel off-balance. Who is saying this? Is it meant seriously or as a joke of some kind?
The words were written by Bruno Lacombe’s. Sadie's hacked into his account in search of clues about what the commune might be planning. It seems that Bruno holds a special place in the hearts and minds of some members of the commune. They speak of him, Sadie tells us, with the same reverence they might about ‘Hegel' or ‘Marx�. Sometimes Bruno's emails seem reasonable, even insightful, sometimes they seem insane.
Oh, and he lives in a cave. And hears voices.
The main character, through whose eyes we see everything, calls herself Sadie Smith but she acknowledges that’s not her real name. She tells us a little bit about her past -- biker gangs and such -- but we can’t be certain any of it is true. She is a spy/provocateur, sent to France to infiltrate a commune of activists and look “for proof they had committed sabotage and were planning more of it.� The narrative consists primarily of Sadie's interactions with the communards, her opinions about this and that, and emails she's intercepted. The tension in the book lies in the question whether she'll be caught, what the communards may or may not do, what Sadie is instructed to do. and whether she does it.
Here, then, is the epistemological dilemma we are meant to navigate in "Creation Lake": Bruno, a person of questionable sanity, writes emails that are secretly read by a woman who, by her own admission, lies, disguises her identity, withholds information, manipulates and betrays people, has innocent people arrested, and appears to be entirely amoral. She doesn't care about people (“You people are not real to me. No one is.�). She doesn’t know who hired her and doesn’t seem to care.
So where do we plant our feet in this uncertain ground? The reader has to wrestle with, or put aside entirely, the questions about whether Sadie’s lying and if Bruno is insane. And, I suppose, what Kushner is getting at.
Certain themes come up several times in “Creation Lake,� among them the question of (as Sadie puts it) “the truth of a person, under all the layers and guises, the significations of group and type.� She describes this central “truth� as “a substance that is pure and stubborn and consistent. It is a hard, white salt. This salt is the core. The four a.m. reality of being.� Interesting ideas, save that they're coming from a person who hides her true identity and seems to lack any core herself. What’s more, it’s four a.m. as she writes this, and she’s “staring at an actual mountain of salt.�
There are other things to ponder, if the reader is so inclined. For example, Sadie frequently speaks of how she uses sex to manipulate people (I’ll pass on the bench scene.) Standard spy novel material, but then Sadie recalls a film she's seen in which a prostitute talks about her job and the roles she has played with her clients, how she dreams of dead people. The day after the interview was filmed, the prostitute killed herself. Does Kushner intend us to see a connection here, or is this reader seeing things where they aren’t? Other constructs like this (if they're real and not my imagination) are scattered like literary Easter eggs throughout the novel.
Then there’s Bruno with his big ideas, his ancient voices in the dark, and a fixation on the development of the human species. It’s possible � even likely � that he makes legitimate points about humanity and genetic lineages, but he’ll also write that thing about Neanderthals and smoking and addiction, and how they “were good at math. They did not enjoy crowds. They had strong stomachs and were not especially prone to ulcers.� What is the reader supposed to make of all this? And what are we to think of his digressions about Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo tardissimus, Cathars, and Cagots (powerful stuff, this: I hadn't heard of them before), and dead Nazi soldiers? What ties them together?
Bruno struck me as the most sympathetic character in the book. He has an actual past. He has suffered the loss of a child and aches at her absence. But there's something more to his story. As a child during the Second World War he came upon the corpse of a Nazi soldier. He took the soldier's helmet as his own and got lice. "These lice were real, Bruno said, but he had come to understand that they were also a metaphor: they stood for the transmigration of life, from one being to the next, from past to future." In time, Bruno will use "lice" to describe the sky filled with satellites that keep us from seeing the stars. Sounds right enough to me. “Currently," he writes, "we are headed toward extinction in a shiny, driverless car, and the question is: How do we exit this car?�
Reading "Creation lake," I wondered whether there is an overarching point to the novel, something that unites the juxtapositions of sanity and madness, identity and performance, reality and myth, humanity and the nameless entities that control our lives from behind curtains. I can't answer that.
In short, “Creation Lake� (the title means nothing, Kushner acknowledged in an interview: it’s the name of a song performed by an LA band; her husband’s friend is one of the musicians) piqued my curiosity, had me seeking patterns and meanings, and at times truly entertained me. But not enough.
My gratitude to Simon & Schuster and Edelweis for providing an digital ARC in return for an honest review.
PS: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the humor in “Creation Lake.”“My rule,� Sadie says, “is that the older the Frenchman, and the more rural his location, the higher his pants will be belted. Jean Violaine’s were up at his sternum.� Sadie, a man tells her, looks “ready for Sunday dinner with the in-laws, in your little silk blouse and your fitted silk skirt. Tasteful, but sexy enough to pique the interest of the father-in-law, which is a French daughter-in-law’s filial duty.� A middle aged man watching two teenaged girls walk by has a “native fluency in Jailbait.� Sadie describes meeting a man “at a bar near the Place des Vosges, playing pinball in a fedora like he thought he was in a French new-wave film from 1963.� Fun stuff.
There’s some wonderful stuff in the book: Ideas to ponder, evocative passages about the “Europe� of the mind and the Europe of reality, wry commentary on litigious societies and political movements, on identity and authenticity� And there is a story of intrigue and suspense running through the book -- the secret mission, will her cover be blown? will there be violence? -- but the story comes in second to the the sardonic, slightly misanthropic musings of the protagonist and the odd emails of a man who's forever offstage like a man-behind-the-curtain.
What it came down to for me in the end is that “Creation Lake� was too much head and very little heart. It was fun to deconstruct but it lacked humanity.
That’s my take, anyway. (Come to think of it, perhaps “totalising cynicism� isn’t entirely off base, though I'm not certain what it means.)
A few remarks:
The very first words in the book are: “Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said. He said they were prone to addiction, too, and especially smoking.�
Interesting opening. Not quite “Call me Ishmael,� but it does what it’s supposed to. You're going to want to read further. The oddness of it -- I defy anyone to read it without thinking "huh?" -- throws the reader to feel off-balance. Who is saying this? Is it meant seriously or as a joke of some kind?
The words were written by Bruno Lacombe’s. Sadie's hacked into his account in search of clues about what the commune might be planning. It seems that Bruno holds a special place in the hearts and minds of some members of the commune. They speak of him, Sadie tells us, with the same reverence they might about ‘Hegel' or ‘Marx�. Sometimes Bruno's emails seem reasonable, even insightful, sometimes they seem insane.
Oh, and he lives in a cave. And hears voices.
The main character, through whose eyes we see everything, calls herself Sadie Smith but she acknowledges that’s not her real name. She tells us a little bit about her past -- biker gangs and such -- but we can’t be certain any of it is true. She is a spy/provocateur, sent to France to infiltrate a commune of activists and look “for proof they had committed sabotage and were planning more of it.� The narrative consists primarily of Sadie's interactions with the communards, her opinions about this and that, and emails she's intercepted. The tension in the book lies in the question whether she'll be caught, what the communards may or may not do, what Sadie is instructed to do. and whether she does it.
Here, then, is the epistemological dilemma we are meant to navigate in "Creation Lake": Bruno, a person of questionable sanity, writes emails that are secretly read by a woman who, by her own admission, lies, disguises her identity, withholds information, manipulates and betrays people, has innocent people arrested, and appears to be entirely amoral. She doesn't care about people (“You people are not real to me. No one is.�). She doesn’t know who hired her and doesn’t seem to care.
So where do we plant our feet in this uncertain ground? The reader has to wrestle with, or put aside entirely, the questions about whether Sadie’s lying and if Bruno is insane. And, I suppose, what Kushner is getting at.
Certain themes come up several times in “Creation Lake,� among them the question of (as Sadie puts it) “the truth of a person, under all the layers and guises, the significations of group and type.� She describes this central “truth� as “a substance that is pure and stubborn and consistent. It is a hard, white salt. This salt is the core. The four a.m. reality of being.� Interesting ideas, save that they're coming from a person who hides her true identity and seems to lack any core herself. What’s more, it’s four a.m. as she writes this, and she’s “staring at an actual mountain of salt.�
There are other things to ponder, if the reader is so inclined. For example, Sadie frequently speaks of how she uses sex to manipulate people (I’ll pass on the bench scene.) Standard spy novel material, but then Sadie recalls a film she's seen in which a prostitute talks about her job and the roles she has played with her clients, how she dreams of dead people. The day after the interview was filmed, the prostitute killed herself. Does Kushner intend us to see a connection here, or is this reader seeing things where they aren’t? Other constructs like this (if they're real and not my imagination) are scattered like literary Easter eggs throughout the novel.
Then there’s Bruno with his big ideas, his ancient voices in the dark, and a fixation on the development of the human species. It’s possible � even likely � that he makes legitimate points about humanity and genetic lineages, but he’ll also write that thing about Neanderthals and smoking and addiction, and how they “were good at math. They did not enjoy crowds. They had strong stomachs and were not especially prone to ulcers.� What is the reader supposed to make of all this? And what are we to think of his digressions about Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, and Homo tardissimus, Cathars, and Cagots (powerful stuff, this: I hadn't heard of them before), and dead Nazi soldiers? What ties them together?
Bruno struck me as the most sympathetic character in the book. He has an actual past. He has suffered the loss of a child and aches at her absence. But there's something more to his story. As a child during the Second World War he came upon the corpse of a Nazi soldier. He took the soldier's helmet as his own and got lice. "These lice were real, Bruno said, but he had come to understand that they were also a metaphor: they stood for the transmigration of life, from one being to the next, from past to future." In time, Bruno will use "lice" to describe the sky filled with satellites that keep us from seeing the stars. Sounds right enough to me. “Currently," he writes, "we are headed toward extinction in a shiny, driverless car, and the question is: How do we exit this car?�
Reading "Creation lake," I wondered whether there is an overarching point to the novel, something that unites the juxtapositions of sanity and madness, identity and performance, reality and myth, humanity and the nameless entities that control our lives from behind curtains. I can't answer that.
In short, “Creation Lake� (the title means nothing, Kushner acknowledged in an interview: it’s the name of a song performed by an LA band; her husband’s friend is one of the musicians) piqued my curiosity, had me seeking patterns and meanings, and at times truly entertained me. But not enough.
My gratitude to Simon & Schuster and Edelweis for providing an digital ARC in return for an honest review.
PS: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the humor in “Creation Lake.”“My rule,� Sadie says, “is that the older the Frenchman, and the more rural his location, the higher his pants will be belted. Jean Violaine’s were up at his sternum.� Sadie, a man tells her, looks “ready for Sunday dinner with the in-laws, in your little silk blouse and your fitted silk skirt. Tasteful, but sexy enough to pique the interest of the father-in-law, which is a French daughter-in-law’s filial duty.� A middle aged man watching two teenaged girls walk by has a “native fluency in Jailbait.� Sadie describes meeting a man “at a bar near the Place des Vosges, playing pinball in a fedora like he thought he was in a French new-wave film from 1963.� Fun stuff.
July 25, 2024
An American spy, working in the private sector after being sacked by the security services - infiltrates a commune in rural France, intent on finding (or manufacturing) evidence of eco-terrorism. All the time, she becomes obsessed with the group's deity, a man nobody has seen in a quarter of a century, a mysterious philosopher intent on restoring the culture of the neanderthal to curb the damages of modern progress.
This stunning novel may be framed as a spy narrative, but opens up to discuss philosophy and anthropology, satirises the bourgeois nature of eco-activism, and asks what is the true cost of human progress and capitalism.
Creation Lake is gripping, thought provoking and always surprising. One of the year's standout memorable novels, I would not be at all surprised to find it on the Booker longlist when it's announced next week.
This stunning novel may be framed as a spy narrative, but opens up to discuss philosophy and anthropology, satirises the bourgeois nature of eco-activism, and asks what is the true cost of human progress and capitalism.
Creation Lake is gripping, thought provoking and always surprising. One of the year's standout memorable novels, I would not be at all surprised to find it on the Booker longlist when it's announced next week.
November 17, 2024
I forgot to review this one when I finished it a month ago! I really enjoyed this book. It definitely won't be for everyone. It's a bit of a weird mish-mash of spy thriller (but not your conventional genre-y page-turner), literary fiction, and philosophical musing on humanity. But that's exactly what I loved about it!
The narrative voice is so strong; 'Sadie Smith' our pseudonymous main character is independent, cool, hard to read, and definitely unlikeable at times. Think Ottessa Moshfegh if she had written . And there's a lot of talk about Neanderthals, so there's that.
Glad this one got put on the Booker shortlist to make me prioritize it! The same thing happened many years ago with Kushner's which I also greatly enjoyed. Guess I gotta read more Kushner now!
The narrative voice is so strong; 'Sadie Smith' our pseudonymous main character is independent, cool, hard to read, and definitely unlikeable at times. Think Ottessa Moshfegh if she had written . And there's a lot of talk about Neanderthals, so there's that.
Glad this one got put on the Booker shortlist to make me prioritize it! The same thing happened many years ago with Kushner's which I also greatly enjoyed. Guess I gotta read more Kushner now!
September 10, 2024
Okay wow, where did this come from?
Well, well, well. After previously disliking everything this author has ever written, and writing her off as "not for me," I was shocked by how much I actually loved this. It rocked.
This book had me completely enthralled. Always had me guessing and not in a plot sense, but for me trying to work out what this book was saying or doing. It’s exhilarating and thought-provoking. Disguised as a spy novel, it’s really full of themes exploring what it’s like to be an outsider; to be on the outskirts of common thinking —for better or worse.
Our protagonist is one of the most fascinating narrators I’ve read in a long time: selfish and destructive. Note: I didn’t say self-destructive —our narrator is not a menace to herself, she’s a menace to others. Her purpose is to make other people self-destructive. It’s her job. Now is she good at her job? That’ll be for you to decide.
This book is both wild and deep. Cold as ice yet tells us a whole lot about ourselves. Lots to chew on. One of those books I could analyze forever. I need time to ruminate. But I will say, it’s a firecracker in my eyes. Quite the turnaround of not caring for Kushner’s past works to bring completely in love with her new one. Okay, gimme time to think.
Quote I liked (very cynical, I might add:
“In my own salt, my own core, this is what I knew: Life goes on a while. Then it ends.
There is no fairness.
Bad people are honored, and good ones are punished.
The reverse is also true. Good people are honored, and bad people are punished, and some will call this grace, or the hand of God, instead of luck. But deep down, even if they lack the courage to admit it, inside each person, they know that the world is lawless and chaotic and random. This truth is stored in their salt. Some have access. Others don't. A gift or a curse, that my salt is right here, with me all the time? A gift.
I'd rather be driven by immutable truths than the winds of some opinion, whose real function is to underscore a person's social position in a group, a belief without depth.�
Well, well, well. After previously disliking everything this author has ever written, and writing her off as "not for me," I was shocked by how much I actually loved this. It rocked.
This book had me completely enthralled. Always had me guessing and not in a plot sense, but for me trying to work out what this book was saying or doing. It’s exhilarating and thought-provoking. Disguised as a spy novel, it’s really full of themes exploring what it’s like to be an outsider; to be on the outskirts of common thinking —for better or worse.
Our protagonist is one of the most fascinating narrators I’ve read in a long time: selfish and destructive. Note: I didn’t say self-destructive —our narrator is not a menace to herself, she’s a menace to others. Her purpose is to make other people self-destructive. It’s her job. Now is she good at her job? That’ll be for you to decide.
This book is both wild and deep. Cold as ice yet tells us a whole lot about ourselves. Lots to chew on. One of those books I could analyze forever. I need time to ruminate. But I will say, it’s a firecracker in my eyes. Quite the turnaround of not caring for Kushner’s past works to bring completely in love with her new one. Okay, gimme time to think.
Quote I liked (very cynical, I might add:
“In my own salt, my own core, this is what I knew: Life goes on a while. Then it ends.
There is no fairness.
Bad people are honored, and good ones are punished.
The reverse is also true. Good people are honored, and bad people are punished, and some will call this grace, or the hand of God, instead of luck. But deep down, even if they lack the courage to admit it, inside each person, they know that the world is lawless and chaotic and random. This truth is stored in their salt. Some have access. Others don't. A gift or a curse, that my salt is right here, with me all the time? A gift.
I'd rather be driven by immutable truths than the winds of some opinion, whose real function is to underscore a person's social position in a group, a belief without depth.�
September 14, 2024
the best thing about this book is brandon taylor’s of this book
August 14, 2024
When Rachel Kushner comes out with a new novel, attention must be paid. Typically, her themes are pollical: dangerous Italian political currents in Flamethrowers, the horror of incarceration in Mars, and often, a pervading outlaw sensibility.
The anti-hero of Creation Lake, who goes by the pseudonym Sadie Smith, is also a sort of outlaw. Again, Kushner tackles a meaty topic: environmental activism (threads of Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood come to mind). It’s an espionage novel but not really; its key question appears to be “is it at all possible to control the future and are we coded somehow to destroy our own humanity?�
The core of the narrative is about Sadie’s undercover work-for-hire to undermine a group of environmental activists, specifically, to disrupt the Moulinards. They are a French farming cooperative that wants to stop the government from constructing a “megabasin� to advance corporate farming.
To this end, she becomes fascinated by the Moulinards� muse, a man named Bruno, who lives in a cave and believes that each of us inherits code, blueprints, or maybe a set of instructions from those who came before us. His musings on the possible superiority of the Neanderthal man make for fascinating reading. Bruno believes codes are like genetic lice crawling from ancestors to descendants.
Sadie’s employers, who are never revealed, are morally questionable, but so are Pascal and many of the other Moulinards. For that matter, so is Sadie. Readers who need someone to root for will not find it in this novel. What they will find are counter-histories and plunges into the past that beg the question “what does it mean to be human.� While Sadie Smith remains, to the last, an enigma, the forces that shape her begin to be revealed.
As a character-based reader, I wondered from time to time whether Creation Lake was a book for me until it became evident it was. As always, Rachel Kushner leaves the reader with a lot to reflect on. I am very grateful that Simon & Schuster provided me with an early copy in exchange for an honest review. 4.5 stars.
The anti-hero of Creation Lake, who goes by the pseudonym Sadie Smith, is also a sort of outlaw. Again, Kushner tackles a meaty topic: environmental activism (threads of Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood come to mind). It’s an espionage novel but not really; its key question appears to be “is it at all possible to control the future and are we coded somehow to destroy our own humanity?�
The core of the narrative is about Sadie’s undercover work-for-hire to undermine a group of environmental activists, specifically, to disrupt the Moulinards. They are a French farming cooperative that wants to stop the government from constructing a “megabasin� to advance corporate farming.
To this end, she becomes fascinated by the Moulinards� muse, a man named Bruno, who lives in a cave and believes that each of us inherits code, blueprints, or maybe a set of instructions from those who came before us. His musings on the possible superiority of the Neanderthal man make for fascinating reading. Bruno believes codes are like genetic lice crawling from ancestors to descendants.
Sadie’s employers, who are never revealed, are morally questionable, but so are Pascal and many of the other Moulinards. For that matter, so is Sadie. Readers who need someone to root for will not find it in this novel. What they will find are counter-histories and plunges into the past that beg the question “what does it mean to be human.� While Sadie Smith remains, to the last, an enigma, the forces that shape her begin to be revealed.
As a character-based reader, I wondered from time to time whether Creation Lake was a book for me until it became evident it was. As always, Rachel Kushner leaves the reader with a lot to reflect on. I am very grateful that Simon & Schuster provided me with an early copy in exchange for an honest review. 4.5 stars.
September 4, 2024
This is my first Kushner book and likely my last. The writing is lovely, but the storytelling is a big miss for me.
I found this one to be a real slog, and this is coming from someone who generally likes slow moving plots. There’s a lot of waiting around for something to happen, but the story just never gets around to seeing that through. It’s not really a spy novel despite being billed as such, though to Kushner’s credit it’s a lot closer to what a real world spy actually does. Still, there’s a reason why most spy novels don’t typically strive for that level of realism.
I also thought the setting felt confused, as though the author couldn’t commit to locating this either firmly in our reality or somewhere more akin to a hypothetical reality that *could* exist.
I perked up a bit during the parts where Kushner is giving us anthropological tidbits or when she’s just kind of riffing (again, the writing here isn’t the problem), but the story just never gets to any place that feels satisfying.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
I found this one to be a real slog, and this is coming from someone who generally likes slow moving plots. There’s a lot of waiting around for something to happen, but the story just never gets around to seeing that through. It’s not really a spy novel despite being billed as such, though to Kushner’s credit it’s a lot closer to what a real world spy actually does. Still, there’s a reason why most spy novels don’t typically strive for that level of realism.
I also thought the setting felt confused, as though the author couldn’t commit to locating this either firmly in our reality or somewhere more akin to a hypothetical reality that *could* exist.
I perked up a bit during the parts where Kushner is giving us anthropological tidbits or when she’s just kind of riffing (again, the writing here isn’t the problem), but the story just never gets to any place that feels satisfying.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
September 9, 2024
** ½ rounded up
For better or worse, we all are now reviewing Rachel Kushner’s hotly anticipated new novel in the shadow of Brandon Taylor’s vicious takedown in the London Review of Books (), which ends its first paragraph with the wickedly unkind zinger:
Unfortunately, Creation Lake is a sloppy book whose careless construction and totalising cynicism come to feel downright hostile. As I read, I kept wondering, why did you even write this?
Told in first person by an American spy-for-hire, pseudonymously monikered Sadie Smith, we hear the inner thoughts of a woman who infiltrates small leftists grouplets, incites them to take perilous actions that would undermine their own safety, and then vanishes while her victims face the very real and serious consequences of state repression.
I did not feel quite as offended as Taylor. Creation Lake has moments of humour and slyness that were enjoyable to read. The world Sadie Smith enters is on the face of it quite interesting. However, I felt the writing largely flat and the depiction of leftist circles boring. The manipulated are largely washed up 60s radicals, disoriented and sad but hardly a foil to our cynical and nihilistic protagonist. There is nothing to cheer for here, just a bitterness permeating everyone. Kushner also constantly takes the reader on these odd tangents about neanderthals and early humans, which Taylor correctly points out, felt like plotting by Wikipedia entry.
I had high hopes for CREATION LAKE. It was my pick to win when the longlist was announced (based on gut rather than anything I had heard of the text). Now I don’t see it making the shortlist, nor does it deserve to do so.
#bookerprize #bookstagramreadsthebooker #bookerprizelonglist #americanliterature #bookprizes #fiction #literaryfiction #books
For better or worse, we all are now reviewing Rachel Kushner’s hotly anticipated new novel in the shadow of Brandon Taylor’s vicious takedown in the London Review of Books (), which ends its first paragraph with the wickedly unkind zinger:
Unfortunately, Creation Lake is a sloppy book whose careless construction and totalising cynicism come to feel downright hostile. As I read, I kept wondering, why did you even write this?
Told in first person by an American spy-for-hire, pseudonymously monikered Sadie Smith, we hear the inner thoughts of a woman who infiltrates small leftists grouplets, incites them to take perilous actions that would undermine their own safety, and then vanishes while her victims face the very real and serious consequences of state repression.
I did not feel quite as offended as Taylor. Creation Lake has moments of humour and slyness that were enjoyable to read. The world Sadie Smith enters is on the face of it quite interesting. However, I felt the writing largely flat and the depiction of leftist circles boring. The manipulated are largely washed up 60s radicals, disoriented and sad but hardly a foil to our cynical and nihilistic protagonist. There is nothing to cheer for here, just a bitterness permeating everyone. Kushner also constantly takes the reader on these odd tangents about neanderthals and early humans, which Taylor correctly points out, felt like plotting by Wikipedia entry.
I had high hopes for CREATION LAKE. It was my pick to win when the longlist was announced (based on gut rather than anything I had heard of the text). Now I don’t see it making the shortlist, nor does it deserve to do so.
#bookerprize #bookstagramreadsthebooker #bookerprizelonglist #americanliterature #bookprizes #fiction #literaryfiction #books
October 29, 2024
A spy who is funny, sardonic, and glib. Eco-terrorists. The south of France. Neanderthals (literally). What more could anyone want in a Rachel Kushner novel? I loved CREATION LAKE, and savored the way she re-imagined the classic spy novel.
September 12, 2024
If you pick this up on the assumption that it is a typical spy thriller, you will be sorely disappointed. Neither James Bond nor George Smiley would be at home in this book. Instead, it's a character study, an exploration of 21st century political conflicts, a delving into the deepest past of humankind looking for answers to current problems - and it's very funny.
I see that it reminded Left Coast Justin of Sara Gran's , a point well taken. It also brought to my mind Eleanor Catton's , with its brilliant skewering of hapless eco-terrorists. And the way in which Kushner casually strews intellectual concepts around the most mundane of circumstances put me in mind of Olga Tokarczuk's writing in general.
"Sarah Smith" is an undercover infiltrator, set on entrapping targeted groups into felonious behavior, thus taking them off the stage to the benefit of those who employ her. Initially she worked for the FBI, but after being fired she began working for whomever was willing to pay her. She has no moral qualms about enticing people into activities they wouldn't have planned on their own; all she cares about is how much she will be paid. The setting for this book is rural, impoverished France, and her marks are a group of environmentalists who object to planned actions by agribusiness and the government. How far does she need to push them to insure that they will be arrested and convicted?
Along the way Kushner provides entertaining descriptions of the inhabitants of the countryside, the political radicals, the elite power brokers, French film, and Italian food, among other things. Her most beguiling character is a man named Bruno, a former activist who decamped to the countryside after the events of 1968 sputtered out, and now lives alone in a cave. He emerges periodically to use his daughter's internet connection to send cryptic messages to the enviros. For the most part these emails are concerned with the nature of the Neanderthals and how that might resonate in today's world, but he also riffs to great effect on the sea explorations of Polynesians.
This has been longlisted for the 2024 Booker, and I truly hope it makes it to the shortlist. Kushner packs a lot into this book, and even though the plot isn't traditionally "thrilling", I didn't want to put it down. Definitely one of my more enriching reading experiences of the year.
I see that it reminded Left Coast Justin of Sara Gran's , a point well taken. It also brought to my mind Eleanor Catton's , with its brilliant skewering of hapless eco-terrorists. And the way in which Kushner casually strews intellectual concepts around the most mundane of circumstances put me in mind of Olga Tokarczuk's writing in general.
"Sarah Smith" is an undercover infiltrator, set on entrapping targeted groups into felonious behavior, thus taking them off the stage to the benefit of those who employ her. Initially she worked for the FBI, but after being fired she began working for whomever was willing to pay her. She has no moral qualms about enticing people into activities they wouldn't have planned on their own; all she cares about is how much she will be paid. The setting for this book is rural, impoverished France, and her marks are a group of environmentalists who object to planned actions by agribusiness and the government. How far does she need to push them to insure that they will be arrested and convicted?
Along the way Kushner provides entertaining descriptions of the inhabitants of the countryside, the political radicals, the elite power brokers, French film, and Italian food, among other things. Her most beguiling character is a man named Bruno, a former activist who decamped to the countryside after the events of 1968 sputtered out, and now lives alone in a cave. He emerges periodically to use his daughter's internet connection to send cryptic messages to the enviros. For the most part these emails are concerned with the nature of the Neanderthals and how that might resonate in today's world, but he also riffs to great effect on the sea explorations of Polynesians.
This has been longlisted for the 2024 Booker, and I truly hope it makes it to the shortlist. Kushner packs a lot into this book, and even though the plot isn't traditionally "thrilling", I didn't want to put it down. Definitely one of my more enriching reading experiences of the year.
September 21, 2024
While reading this, the only real feeling I had about it, is that the literary intellectual community, is a circle jerk of MFAs that like to congratulate themselves on beautifully writing books that are devoid of both meaning and feeling.
I thought the astronaut book was bad, but this. This is 200 pages longer. And I think has even less meaning.
Its purpose wasn’t to tell a good story because the story was hot garbage. Barely coherent.
It was like going to grandpa’s house, and grandpa’s lost a few of his marbles. So he goes off on random tangents that really don’t have any bearing on anything, like Neanderthals and Cave Paintings and Sailing via Star Navigation, but your mom promised you $10 and an ice cream sundae if you sit there and listen to him ramble, so you do, because you’re broke and you like ice cream but by the end of it you want to gouge your own eyes out from sheer boredom and you realize you should have asked for more than $10 and an ice cream sundae.
The narrator, Sadie Smith, wants her money and her ice cream AND thinks that Grandpa’s rambling has some hidden meaning and that her life will magically get better if only she can find it.
Meanwhile she’s infiltrating this hippie commune that’s like totally progressive, so progressive it quite resembles something out of the 50s, where the men drink and smoke and bullshit all day and the women barely pay attention to their drooling mostly naked babies and smoke cigarettes and gossip (this is France after all). Don’t worry, this is the natural order of things as evidenced by the progressive commune.
The protagonist or author, I’m unsure which, has a weird fascination with the “sex lives� of children. Which was disgusting by the way, I really should have put the book down there.
It did on occasion make me laugh, but I had to skim read the last 30 pages because I really just could not any more.
I thought the astronaut book was bad, but this. This is 200 pages longer. And I think has even less meaning.
Its purpose wasn’t to tell a good story because the story was hot garbage. Barely coherent.
It was like going to grandpa’s house, and grandpa’s lost a few of his marbles. So he goes off on random tangents that really don’t have any bearing on anything, like Neanderthals and Cave Paintings and Sailing via Star Navigation, but your mom promised you $10 and an ice cream sundae if you sit there and listen to him ramble, so you do, because you’re broke and you like ice cream but by the end of it you want to gouge your own eyes out from sheer boredom and you realize you should have asked for more than $10 and an ice cream sundae.
The narrator, Sadie Smith, wants her money and her ice cream AND thinks that Grandpa’s rambling has some hidden meaning and that her life will magically get better if only she can find it.
Meanwhile she’s infiltrating this hippie commune that’s like totally progressive, so progressive it quite resembles something out of the 50s, where the men drink and smoke and bullshit all day and the women barely pay attention to their drooling mostly naked babies and smoke cigarettes and gossip (this is France after all). Don’t worry, this is the natural order of things as evidenced by the progressive commune.
The protagonist or author, I’m unsure which, has a weird fascination with the “sex lives� of children. Which was disgusting by the way, I really should have put the book down there.
It did on occasion make me laugh, but I had to skim read the last 30 pages because I really just could not any more.
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