Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

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