Creation Lake: A Novel

by Rachel Kushner

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

In the new novel from the critically-acclaimed author of The Flamethrowers, a spy sent to France thinks she’s fully in control and running the show, but…

*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 BOOKER PRIZE*

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Time, LitHub, The Millions, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more!

“At last I get to say how deeply, madly, irrecoverably I loved Creation Lake...it was all stylish and cool, and then somehow the book struck a blow to my heart.” —Louise Erdrich, Kirkus

From Rachel Kushner, a Booker Prize finalist, two-time National Book Award finalist, and “one of the most gifted authors of her generation” (The New York Times Book Review), comes 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982116521
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	59
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Rachel Kushner is the author of Creation Lake, her latest novel, The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection, and the internationally bestselling novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex from Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books are translated into twenty-seven languages.

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/17/2024

An undercover agent embeds with radical French environmentalists in this scintillating story of activism and espionage from Kushner (The Mars Room). Sadie Smith, a former FBI agent who lost her job after she was accused of entrapment, takes an assignment from unidentified contacts in the private sector. Her mission is to infiltrate the subversive commune Le Moulin, which is led by activist Pascal Balmy and is suspected of having destroyed a set of excavators at a reservoir construction site. Le Moulin’s ideas derive from their elderly mentor, Bruno Lacombe, who has spent the past 12 years living in caves. Bruno emerges from time to time to communicate with the group by email, but none of the characters see him in person. In Paris, Sadie seduces a filmmaker friend of Pascal’s to secure an introduction to him. Kushner intersperses Sadie’s tale with Bruno’s colorful claims, such as the alleged superiority of the Neanderthals (their square jaw was a “sunk cost”) and the existence of mythological creatures like Bigfoot (“We are not alone”). Eventually, Sadie learns of the group’s plans to protest a local fair, and she approaches the conclusion of her assignment with alarming amorality. Most of the narrative is dedicated to the activists’ philosophizing and Sadie’s gimlet-eyed observations, which Kushner magically weaves together (“People tell themselves, strenuously, that they believe in this or that political position,” Sadie muses. “But the deeper motivation for their rhetoric... is to shore up their own identity”). Readers will be captivated. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for CREATION LAKE

“A profound and irresistible page-turner about a spy-for-hire who infiltrates a commune of eco-activists in rural France. The prose is thrilling, the ideas electrifying.” —The Booker Prize 2024 judges on Creation Lake

"Creation Lake bears all the hallmarks of her inquisitive mind and creative daring... a spy thriller laced with a killer dose of deadpan wit... Kushner inhabits the spy’s perspective with such eerie finesse that you feel how much fun she’s having... the real covert operative here is Kushner, who’s never felt more cunning than in this novel about the clashing ideological claims that have left us bereft at the end of time. Bore through this noir posing and wry satire of radical politics, and you feel something vital and profound prowling around in the darkness beneath." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Using the framework of an espionage novel, Kushner creates a spellbinding story of intrigue and subterfuge that examines the limits of control and moral influence." —Lauren LeBlanc, Los Angeles Times

"Kushner’s outrageous talent blazes hot throughout the book ...Kushner has tapped into something primal, pure, and unforgettable.”—Leigh Haber, Boston Globe

“A dazzling work of fiction: brisk, stylish, funny, moving, and, unexpectedly, piercingly moral...At once terse and vivid, economical and expansive...true, funny, sad, shrewd, and beautifully controlled through each unyielding sentence.” —Anahid Nersessian, The New York Review of Books

"Kushner is as intimidatingly intelligent as this twisty novel’s main character." —Emma Alpern, New York Magazine

"Extraordinary... full of tension and clarity... riveting... incredibly fun." —Nicolás Medina Mora, The Nation

“As in a Graham Greene or John le Carre novel, in Creation Lake the point of spying is not just to find out what is happening but how to pick one’s way through a world of ideas... so fun...” —Laura Marsh, The New Republic

"Ambitious, intelligent and gripping... Creation Lake is one of the best books of the year so far." —The Spectator

“One of the most interesting and adept voices in contemporary fiction... Kushner’s writing is clean, tight and often very funny as she jumps between past and present but never loosens her iron grip on the reader’s attention.” —Bloomberg

"All the hallmarks of an excellent thriller are here, as are Kushner's gifts for dark humor and stunning prose, to make for an exciting, exhilarating tear through the shadowy underbelly of international espionage—and the very human emotions that can complicate it." —Town and Country Magazine

"It's suspenseful, extremely smart and brilliantly executed." —Jami Attenberg, The Times-Picayune

“An immersive novel about an agent provocateur embedded within a group of environmental activists in south-western France, and slowly becoming mesmerized by the group elder’s theories about Neanderthals. It’s seductive, entrancing, and quite off the wall.” —Mick Herron, The Guardian

“Rachel Kushner wrote a secret agent book, and set it in France. What more must we know to anticipate it? Nothing, because no doubt, like nearly everything she writes, it will be an intellectual masterpiece while also reinventing a genre while also being wildly entertaining. That’s kind of her thing.” —Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2024

"Creation Lake reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture. Only Rachel Kushner could weave environmental activism, paranoia, and nihilism into a gripping philosophical thriller. Enthralling and sleekly devious, this book is also a lyrical reflection on both the origin and the fate of our species. A novel this brilliant and profound shouldn’t be this much fun.” —Hernan Diaz

“I was completely immersed and mesmerized. Creation Lake is a highly plotted fast-paced noir and yet full of ideas and depth. Rachel Kushner is the most exciting writer of her generation.” —Bret Easton Ellis

“At last I get to say how deeply, madly, irrecoverably I loved Creation Lake... it was all stylish and cool, and then somehow the book struck a blow to my heart.” —Louise Erdrich

“By writing in the unillusioned voice of an ex-FBI agent infiltrating a bunch of rural French subversives, Rachel Kushner has cover to say whatever she damn well pleases. And because Kushner has the most bracing intelligence in American fiction, she rips the skin off what many of us like to think we believe.” —David Hare

“Surprising and delectable... This ecstatic vision of the collective human experience shimmers in stark opposition to the corporate plan to extract and lock up the valley’s groundwater. A brain-spinning tale and searing look at our perilous estrangement from nature.” —Booklist, STARRED review

"An undercover agent embeds with radical French environmentalists in this scintillating story of activism and espionage from Kushner...Most of the narrative is dedicated to the activists’ philosophizing and Sadie’s gimlet-eyed observations, which Kushner magically weaves together...Readers will be captivated." —Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

“Sadie is similar to Kushner’s earlier fictional protagonists—astringent, thrill-seeking, serious, worldly—but here the author has tapped into a more melancholy, contemplative mode that weaves neatly around a spy story... Kushner has captured the internal crisis of ideology that spy yarns often ignore, while creating an engaging tale in its own right. A deft, brainy take on the espionage novel.” —Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review

From the Publisher

★ 2024-05-31
A woman infiltrates a cabal of French radicals. Will she go native?

The narrator of Kushner’s fourth novel goes by Sadie, though her real name—like much of her identity—is clouded in mystery. She works undercover to undermine environmental activists, formerly for the U.S. government, but since a case went sideways, she’s gone freelance. Now, she’s been commissioned by unnamed “contacts” to disrupt the Moulinards, a small farming cooperative in southwestern France protesting a government effort to construct a “megabasin” to support large-scale corporate farming. The Moulinards’ leader, Bruno, is an “anti-civver,” skeptical not just of capitalism but of the entire human species. (His writings—he exists largely in the form of email dispatches—argue that Neanderthals might have been better adapted for the planet.) Sadie has an arsenal of tools to monkey-wrench the monkey wrenchers—a willingness to exchange sex for access, a knack for languages and hacking, well-made cover stories, fake passports—but her work among the Moulinards stokes her own identity crisis. As she enters their world, she processes their enthusiasm, their philosophy (there are abundant references to critic Guy Debord), and their paranoia, which escalates as a national minister plans a visit to the region, upping the stakes. As if echoing Bruno’s concern, Sadie is such a slyly clever human that she’s undermining her own humanity. Sadie is similar to Kushner’s earlier fictional protagonists—astringent, thrill-seeking, serious, worldly—but here the author has tapped into a more melancholy, contemplative mode that weaves neatly around a spy story. Nobody would mistake it for a thriller, but Kushner has captured the internal crisis of ideology that spy yarns often ignore, while creating an engaging tale in its own right.

A deft, brainy take on the espionage novel.

Kirkus Reviews