

Review By Gabrielle
Rachel Kushner’s latest novel, Creation Lake, takes us to rural France and inside an anarchist collective to explore modernity, authenticity, and the nature of freedom.
Favourite Quote:
I pictured those people, the Cagots, young and old, men and women, children, waiting in an orderly line to receive the host on the end of a long wooden spoon. Not allowed in the church. Forced to pray at this little side door. I imagined them dressed crudely, in cloaks of rough burlap, these social outcasts without rights, who would come into the village to submit to the authority of the church. There was something moving about it, as if God and God’s emissaries on earth were separate from the cruel feudal structure that deemed them “Cagot.”
Goodreads Synopsis:
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.
I’ll just come out and say it, I don’t know how I feel about this book. I can’t even tell you if I liked it or not. Embarrassingly, it is my first Rachel Kushner novel. I was drawn to the description of the book; I’ve long been fascinated, like many, by hard core activism. Those that are willing to go to extreme measures to “protect” physical places and big ideas. The duality of it is interesting to me. From what I can tell, this is something Rachel explores in other works as well, but this time, we’re looking at it through the framework of a spy novel.
Don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t a spy novel in the traditional sense. There aren’t many shocking revelations or pulse pounding moments (although there are a few). The pace is quite different from that. The novel’s structure, composed of “short, vaulting sections,” creates a sense of momentum, a momentum I’d label as languid. At times I had a hard time sticking with it, but I was invested enough to keep going and by the last third, I found myself entirely sucked in.
The novel’s protagonist, “Sadie Smith,” is a compelling character. As an American operative infiltrating a French anarchist collective, Sadie embodies the moral ambiguity that pervades the narrative. Her calculated seduction of Lucien and her complex relationship with Moulinards (the collective members) create a fascinating tension between manipulation and genuine connection.
This one is a thinker for sure. Told from Sadie’s perspective, much of the novel is Sadie’s summaries of emails stolen from Bruno, a mysterious mentor to the anarchist group. They detail his vision of emancipation through a return to the ancient past. He lives in a cave, for example. Bruno has a lot to say about our ancestors and the history of France and it made me want to talk to Rachel about the research she did for this book. It must have been extensive.
Really, Rachel is probing the intersection of politics, power, and human desire through the lens of espionage and deception. Themes include power dynamics, political resistance, and the complex interplay between personal and collective identity.
An interesting novel, I will be thinking about it for some time.
Thank you, Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.