Creation Lake

A Novel

416 pages

English language

Published Sept. 14, 2024 by Scribner.

ISBN:
9781982116538

View on OpenLibrary

5 stars (1 review)

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 …

4 editions

The best book I've read in years

5 stars

Creation Lake is a spy novel, ostensibly, but it's immediately more than that. It's an examination of French politics and class, the "spy cops" scandal, and the demise of Neanderthals.

The book follows Sadie, a corporate spy who's detached to the point of sociopathy. But her wry observations are compelling. She's amoral, brutal and unsentimental, but also smart and amusing. She draws you in though you know she cannot be trusted, even as a narrator.

Rachel Kushner seems unusual in the context of contemporary American literature for her ability to weave global sociopolitical observations into narratives that switch back and further between contemporary issues and historical events.

Kushner's prose is both concise and poetic where it needs to be. She shows real skill in capturing human experiences against historical timescales. What's particularly impressive about this book is Kushner's sharp handling of both time and space. She weaves together the contemporary, …

Subjects

  • American literature