This philosophical thriller set in France was a challenging read for me. This book overflows with insights and theories on topics like Neanderthals and astrology. While I respect Kushner’s intelligence and expertise, I found the anthropological focus overwhelming. I wanted more character development and clearer motivations, Although marketed as a spy novel about eco-terrorism, the plot felt slow and lacked excitement, apart from the ending.

A lot of friends seemed to really like and recommend but it didn’t really do it for me.
Thanks so much to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC which I read in exchange for this honest review.

Published by ‎ Scribner on September 3, 2024

Rachel Kushner devoted Creation Lake to the creation of a female character who refuses to regret the dubious path she has chosen. The character uses the name Sadie Smith, a name she will discard by the novel’s end. Sadie has made a career of working undercover. While she is schooled in deceit, she is reasonably honest with the reader about her checkered life. Sadie isn’t someone who much cares what you think of her.

Sadie’s backstory includes an aborted career working for the FBI. She infiltrated organizations of drug dealers but her later focus was on environmental/political activists. Federal authorities brand activists as “terrorists” if they do anything to disrupt business or government operations. Sadie understands but is indifferent to the reality that her job is more about generating good press for the FBI than about fighting actual terrorism.

To the extent that Sadie fights crime, she does so by using her looks and breasts to win the trust of men. During her final mission as a government agent, her supervisor pressured her to find (or, saying the silent part out loud, to manufacture) evidence that an animal rights group was planning to commit violent acts of sabotage. Sadie convinced a young man that he would have a chance with her if he proved his commitment by taking direct action in support of their cause. Following Sadie's instructions, he purchased fertilizer to make a bomb and delivered it to a woman who was the FBI’s real target.

To the surprise of everyone, a jury accepted the boy’s entrapment defense. His embarrassing acquittal deprived the FBI of a chance to claim a victory in the war against terrorism. Professing to be shocked that one of their agents would entrap an innocent person, the FBI fired Sadie, sending her into the more lucrative world of private clandestine employment.

The entrapped activists would like to sue Sadie but haven’t yet discovered her true identity. Near the novel’s end, Sadie becomes concerned that the FBI might reveal that information to make her a scapegoat. If she regrets setting up an innocent boy for a potentially lengthy prison sentence, her regret is based on her loss of employment and future consequences that she might face. She appears to feel no guilt, having convinced herself that she had “no choice but to plant the idea of violence in the boy’s head, since he was doing a poor job of coming to it on his own.”

Now Sadie is pretending to be the girlfriend of Lucien Dubois. She is staying in his (otherwise empty) family house in the Guyenne Valley, a rural area in southwestern France where the commune of Le Moulin is located. The Moulinards are environmental activists who, like most activists, are well-meaning but generally ineffectual. Their most urgent concern is that industry wants to divert water for its own uses without regard to the impact that loss of water will have on local farmers.

Sadie has been hired to keep tabs on the Moulinards by unseen interests with a hidden agenda. She soon manages to insinuate herself into the organization.

Some of the novel’s interest lies in its depiction of squabbling activists who might agree about broad goals while disagreeing about the means of achieving them. Some activists view violence as a tool while others reject it. Some believe capitalism will collapse on its own while others want to precipitate a worker’s revolution. Whether their actions advance or undermine their cause is unclear, although taking action seems to be less important to most of them than the intellectual exercise of debating the purpose and methodology of activism.

Sadie’s employers have outfitted her with technology that allows her to read email exchanges between Bruno Lacombe and Le Moulin’s leader, Pascal Balmy. Sadie believes that Bruno, as Pascal’s mentor, would want to guide Pascal’s strategy for hindering industrial development in the valley, but most of Bruno’s emails discuss his theories about Neanderthals, theories he developed while living in a cave. Bruno is “anti-civ,” or against civilization in the parlance of French activism, although he might best be seen as a tragic figure who responded to the death of his daughter (run over by Bruno’s own tractor) by rejecting farming and most human interaction. Lacombe now believes it is time for mankind to return to the caves, to live in “tiny clans,” a recipe for a future that seems more post-apocalyptic than visionary.

Bruno’s obsession with Neanderthals opens the door for informative discussions of archeology and evolution, language and war. For example, Bruno distinguishes his preference for cave dwelling from living in a bunker to avoid nuclear annihilation. “In a bunker, you cannot hear the human community in the earth, the deep cistern of voices, the lake of our creation.” In the cave, Bruno can hear everything, including languages he doesn’t understand, prompting him to comment upon the development of language.

Kushner seems to use Neanderthals and environmental activism and even the choice of sex partners to develop a deeper theme about human progress, but the precise definition of that theme is open to debate. Perhaps book clubs will be able to ferret it out.

The novel explores several other topics, including the French Revolution, map making in the time of Captain Cook, and the tendency to mistake random luck for fate. These are interesting discussions even if they do not obviously advance the plot. Repeated references to Guy Debord, a Marxist theorist who influenced Pascal, fit more comfortably into the story, although the characters are primarily interested in whether Debord is worthy of a place in the activist pantheon, given his incestuous relationship with his sister.

Speaking of the plot, Sadie manipulates Lucien to connect her with Le Moulin. Believing Sadie to be an unemployed American grad student, Lucien arranges for Sadie to translate into English a book that Pascal and the other Moulinards are writing. She dutifully spies on the activists and takes the opportunity to shag one because “even as I maintained a fraudulent persona, within that persona I found methods to meet real needs.”

As Sadie discharges her duties to her employer, she is again asked to set up an act of violence that would not occur without her intervention. The reader will wonder whether Sadie learned anything from her earlier experience with entrapment and whether that experience will shape her response to her employer’s deadly demand.

While I wouldn’t categorize Creation Lake as a thriller, the story does build tension by raising concern about Sarah’s fate as an undercover operative. Perhaps because Kushner focuses on ideas and characterization, the novel’s pace is uneven. Few novels can be everything to every reader; those looking for an action novel might be disappointed by Creation Lake. Still, a fast-moving scene near the end provides a satisfying, if anti-climactic, answer to whether Sadie's effort to set up the Moulinards will succeed.

Sadie is an interesting character but isn’t particularly sympathetic. Some readers might find Kushner’s digressions into the purpose of Neanderthal cave paintings to be distracting. I would agree that, while the novel's various asides are interesting, they add unnecessary words to the book. The words are nevertheless wielded with great skill and the novel is a welcome departure from formulaic spy/undercover cop stories.

RECOMMENDED

Three and a half stars. I enjoyed this book - just short of "loved it." The writing is incredible, but more about dialogue and observations rather than plot. Kiushner's acclaim in this book is well-earned.

dnf 50%

I tried really hard to get into this. I just didn't see the point and was extremely bored. I really did like Rachel Kushner's writing. However, this story isn't for me.

This book is so wildly unique, intelligent and funny it is hard to describe in a review. A mix of spy novel and philosophy about how Homo Sapiens became the dominant species on earth, I've really read nothing else like it and it is in my top five reads of 2024. Perfect for a book club discussion as it is so totally unlike anything else structurally and thematically ripe for deep, metaphysical conversations.

I like Rachel Kushner, but I really did not understand what this book was trying to do or convey. I feel like I don't know anything about any of the characters, nor do I know what I'm supposed to leave the book with.

I had a hard time caring about the characters at first. It was a very slow build to what was marketed as a eco spy novel. But I felt that it built to a nice finish.

dnf @40%
I gave this one a solid try but I was so bored that my brain wasn't retaining the words on the page. Kushner's writing is great and I can see why she's such a lauded author, but the story itself was not my thing and moved so slowly. I loved the concept of infiltrating this cult but it took forever to get anywhere.

I have never read Kushner before despite most of her books being on one TBR list or another. I was honestly shocked by how much I liked this given the mixed reviews I saw everywhere for it. I was so invested in every part of the story and even reading about Sadie remembering various emails felt propulsive in a way I hadn't expected.

Complex, thought-provoking, wry and intelligent....I admire Kushner's creativity and the way she links topics across literally tens of thousands of years, the way she changes voices from discussing a high-brow topic lyrically to dissing French cheese, in one sentence.

I think that Kushner's ability to link disparate themes is perhaps the takeaway from this book: that even if we withhold ourselves from the world (as Bruno does, as Sadie does), the world creeps in, and we are all part of the story and affected by what's come before.

I can't say that I liked this book (the plot moves slowwww), but I did appreciate it and am glad I read it.

I loved Rachel Kushner's book The Flamethrowers when I read it many years go, so I was very excited to receive an early copy of her new one.

Sadie is a spy, on a new job in France when she moves in with one of the men she is there to spy on. There is also quite a bit of discussion about prehistoric communities, neanderthals, and human life.

I love books about spies -- I find it all very fascinating and really enjoyed those parts of this book,

Rachel Kushner's writing is very descriptive and I could picture all of the locations so distinctly. This book definitely made me want to check out her backlist that I have yet to read, and check out what she does next! She is very good at setting a mood and getting under your skin.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!

CREATION LAKE was really cool, the way a French person sitting in American coffee shop might appear. This book is coolly smoking a cigarette in the corner.

While I didn’t find it propulsive, I enjoyed Kirshner’s voice, namely how funny she is. The plot and characters were interesting, then add in the philosophy and humor (and French history). And I really enjoyed this. Would certainly recommend to the right reader.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Scribner for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it in your local and online bookstores and libraries on September 3, 2024.

This is a difficult one to review. I certainly enjoyed reading it, although on reflection I'm having a bit of a "what the hell did I just read" moment. It's well-written and compelling and original.

Creation Lake was a wild ride! I really enjoyed the philosophical part of considering progress, harm to the environment, and what our true purpose is (what our "salt" is). The protagonist was an unlikeable character but I think Kushner did an excellent job writing her.

Propulsive, jaunty, and surprisingly contemplative novel of big ideas. The marketing team (and by extension, the Booker jury) labeling this as a "spy thriller" does the book a major disservice. Anyone expecting some sort of John le Carré work will be rightfully disappointed, and I could have been one of those people. That isn't normally a genre I would ever touch, but the premise of this novel (and riffing on climate change) intrigued me so much that I couldn't resist. What I'd argue instead: if you're a fan of Emma Cline or Rachel Cusk, and uber-messy female protagonists are your thing, then run (don't walk) to this gem immediately. "Sadie Smith" is a cipher heroine for the ages, and one that I won't soon forget in all of her double-dealing and mysterious allure. I never thought that I needed extended treatises on Neanderthals (or "Thals," as they're glowingly nicknamed here), but I stand corrected. I would have been satisfied with a separate novel detailing Bruno Lacombe's musings on the world's history and the many iterations of his eventful life. These sorts of ruminative detours on science, history, and human destiny might inhibit enjoyment of the novel to some readers, as well as Sadie's questionable decision-making throughout. (I'd say that inexplicable luck has aided her far more than genuine professional skill as a "spy.") Sadie doesn't always win out in the end, which is refreshing, and the cast of characters surrounding her are vivid and specific. I'd only give a minor quibble for the book running a tad too long, but overall, I felt very taken care of as a reader in Rachel Kushner's capable hands. In light of that, I'll seek out more content from the author in the future and sing this book's praises whenever I possibly can.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for eARC access.

Congratulations to Rachel Kushner, author of Creation Lake, for being shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award.

Her latest novel opens with an as-yet unnamed narrator summarizing emails from cave-dweller Bruno Lascombe to someone named Pascal, emails about Neanderthals and human history that the narrator somehow secretly reads. Gradually, readers come to know these characters and a broad assortment of others associated with them. The narrator, a spy hired by someone whose identity even she does not know, has been assigned to infiltrate a remote French agricultural commune. Led by Pascal Balmy, commune members are believed to have destroyed digging equipment employed in the building of megabasins to supply water to huge agribusinesses threatening to take over the region, forcing small-scale traditional farmers out of business.

Divided into eight parts, each consisting of several short sections, the story alternates between the spy narrator’s activities and her summaries of items in Bruno Lascombe’s email Sent box, which she has hacked in hopes of gaining insights into the commune’s activities. Little by little, Kushner identifies characters, revealing their backgrounds as well as the American narrator’s. Currently operating under the name Sadie Smith, an identity that changes for each job. the narrator schemes her way into an affair with Pascal’s best childhood friend—a French filmmaker named Lucien--in order to infiltrate the commune as a trusted “insider.” From section to section, Sadie recalls past assignments in which she used similar tactics to entrap those she has been assigned to infiltrate, including an assignment during her time as an FBI agent that forced her to flee her home country to work as a private agent throughout Europe. Thinking she had successfully escaped, she comes to realize her past might catch up with her.

Although some readers have criticized the slow development resulting from the inclusion of Bruno Lascomb’s meandering anthropological and philosophical emails, those same emails and Sadie’s developing attitudes toward their writer come to play an important role. This is a spy novel, yes, but it is much more, and readers wanting an action-packed, fast-paced thriller should choose a different book. Readers who enjoy literary fiction and can appreciate the slow, piece-by-piece development leading up to the book’s climax, as well as the author’s humor and surprises, should find Creation Lake creative, thought-provoking, quirky, entertaining, and an admirable accomplishment.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for an egalley in exchange for an honest review.

This might be my favorite of her novels, though I would need to reread The Flamethrowers to be sure. I like the tone, the pace, the build-up. I will be rooting for her through award season.

It is easy to see why this was selected for the Booker long list. It was difficult at first for me to get into this book, but I enjoyed the back and forth narrative and quirky main character. This was definitely not what I thought it would be, but brilliant in it's own way. I will definitely be keeping an eye on Kushner's future work.

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. my first rachel kushner but it won't be my last!