In Bernardo Bertolucci's movie The Dreamers (2003), three people are holed up inside a Parisian apartment during the student riots of 1968. A brick suddenly smashes through the window. "The outside has come to the inside," proclaims the female lead. As the glass shatters, so do their illusions that they can extricate themselves from crisis. Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake is that brick going through the glass, though it takes place in the present, amidst eco-anxiety, late-stage capitalism, and Covid-19. And did I mention it's a wry spy novel, told by a narrator whose moral compass is by far the most broken out of all the characters?
The central plot of the novel is that the protagonist, code-named Sadie, is hired to infiltrate Le Moulin, a radical farming collective in a small, fictional French town. She has heard that the members are planning a big direct action and has been sent, by someone, to gather information. The author strategically gives readers breadcrumbs about the nature of the event and what Sadie's role will be, providing a steady undercurrent of suspense.
At first, I was perplexed that the people of Le Moulin were meant to be radicals, given they spent so much time not doing anything except discussing their de facto leader's email missives about cave art and the identification of stars. That leader, Bruno, is perhaps a little senile — he lives in a cave and uses a shortwave radio to (he claims) contact earlier civilizations. He is the perfect embodiment of collapsed idealism, heartbroken by capitalist excess and the increasing privatization of natural resources (as in France's megabasins of water storage). Bruno romanticizes Neanderthals, whom he believes would be better suited than homo sapiens for modern life due to their sturdy bodies and large skulls, which he assumes held large brains.
Even though I didn't know how seriously to take him, I knew how he felt: who hasn't been so exhausted by events of recent years that they've found themselves embracing unusual ideas? Bruno is the perfect counterpoint for Sadie, who reads his correspondence after hacking into his email. Even as we learn about some of the terrible things she's done, it's hard to hate a narrator this funny. Regarding a popular author, for instance, she says, "[H]e had the sexual energy of a grandmother with bone density issues. His fragile and depleted air would be his unique strategy as a cocksman." She also shares her life principles: "My rule is that the older the Frenchman, and the more rural his location, the higher his pants will be belted."
From reading other contemporary espionage novels, I knew to expect two things: first, that wildly disparate plot elements would come together somehow, and second, that the book would leave plenty of questions unanswered. Both expectations were met and, though I wanted more closure, I was still satisfied by Creation Lake.
I really enjoyed the conversations and characters, but I wasn't fully sure what I was reading at times. The plot is slow and mostly light on the action, and I didn't know how I felt about the narrator. This is one of those books where everything clicks into place an hour after finishing. (This interview with the author was helpful.) Only then did I see the staggering layers of character development, the unruly threads of modern living, and what it means to be in constant conversation with the past. Once I gave up on Creation Lake being any certain kind of novel, I was wowed that it wasn't a particular type at all so much as a rupture of one.
Reviewed by Erin Lyndal Martin for BookBrowse.
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