I really bounced off this and gave up after around 100 pages. It was well written but I just didn't find it engaging. That probably says more about me as the writer is clearly talented but I just couldn't get into it.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024
Nominated for the National Book Award 2024
Come for the story, stay for the messy female protagonist: Much like Ottessa Moshfegh, Kushner excels in writing complex women that are not crafted to be sympathetic or to function as identification figures. But where Moshfegh investigates extreme aesthetics of disgust and alienation, Kushner takes a more direct political approach. My favorite is still The Mars Room which deals with violence, classism and trauma and also has the most captivating plot, but while The Flamethrowers' slightly convoluted story line tended to aggravate me, I still loved the messy female artist who serves as the protagonist.

And now Kushner twists French noir, giving us a hard-drinking female spy as a narrator. Moving from Italian anarchists (The Flamethrowers) to French leftist thinkers around Guy Debord, Kushner's latest protagonist, 34-year-old American Sadie Smith (not her real name), aims to infiltrate the anarchist eco-commune "Le Moulin" around Bruno Lacombe which is located in the limestone regions of southern France. Lacombe rambles to his followers about the Neanderthals and spits conspiracy theories, the group is accused of sabotaging capitalist ventures they deem to harm the environment.

But this is not another book about climate change, the destruction of the environment, extremist bubbles, or the importance of framing narratives, no: It's strong when it illuminates the language PhD drop out and now spy-for-hire known as Sadie. She seems to like her job, she is unscrupulous and cold, she employs her beauty to get her job done, but her psychological turmoil prompted by a feeling of emptiness shines through the cracks of her narration. Her ruminations, often inspired by her astute observations, reveal a grim world-view that reflect a disillusionment with humans in general. To her, ideological belief systems are just another quirk.

What really bothered me though was the extensive reflection of Bruno's ideas: The essayistic endeavors that overwhelm the book show a lack of interest in plot, which is not a problem per se, but the theorizing just didn't captivate me enough. Extra points though for the connection to Houellebecq's Sérotonine, very smartly done. Overall, an interesting effort, that, for my taste, goes slightly overboard.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this novel. There are some fascinating ideas, (in Bruno’s emails),and some good, (but bleak), insights about Europe and the state of the world. Sadie, an intentionally unlikeable narrator, didn’t work for me as a character or as a cipher, or as a satirical device. The espionage narrative was a bit half-arsed, neither exciting, nor black comedy. I quite enjoyed the process of reading it but felt something was missing from the novel. One of those books that make me think I’m missing something brilliant (and perhaps I am).

Maybe I was too dumb for this book but I really didn’t like how it was written or the plot or really had any clue what was going on because of how things were being told. Are you supposed to be deducing things as you read along? It just felt so flat and confusing.

The premise of Creation Lake sounded intriguing. This was after all pitched as a spy-thriller and described as "Kill Bill written by John le Carré", It seemed to be right up my alley. Even more so after it's Booker Prize nomination. So, clearly expectations were high, maybe too high.

Creation Lake felt more like a novel populated by ideas than action and subsequently I felt let down. If I didn't have the expectation of it being an exciting spy novel full of intrigue and everything that goes with it, i.e. a fast pace, strong plot and interesting twists, it might have been a different experience. But in the end it was the uneventful telling of a lackluster spy with little motivation for her mission. Even the ending is uneventful and leaves the reader even more disgruntled.

Kushner undoubtedly incorporated interesting ideas and food for thought, but packaging it as a spy thriller and comparing it to Killing Eve is a stretch.

I’d been wondering about whether to read this for a while and bumped it up my list as a result of the Booker shortlist. Unfortunately I just couldn’t get into it and struggled to get a sense of what was going on. I will say that I was quite tired during the week that I read it and the kindle format probably didn’t help, but I just couldn’t find a reason to care enough to persevere. I hope it finds it’s readers through as I expect some people will enjoy it and it was well written.

Lots of research has been done for this book and I don’t doubt it’s accuracy. For me, however, it turned the narrative into a more scientific work than I was comfortable with. For those who like more technically detailed books this is for you.

An intelligent and meandering novel following “Sadie” (an alias for PI and narrator of the book l) on a job in France working to infiltrate an extremist organisation for employers unknown. Interesting and very different to anything I’ve read before. I feel like I’ll take different things from this on a future reading but very engaging, albeit it requires concentration at times. Ambitious and deserving of the hype surrounding it!

This gripping narrative delves deep into themes of progress, activism, and the blurred lines between entrapment and genuine belief. Beyond its high-stakes tension, it offers a broader reflection on humanity—past, present, and future—exploring our evolving relationship with the environment, power structures, and ideological movements. With sharp prose and intricate plotting, Creation Lake is as much a thrilling undercover mission as it is a thought-provoking study of the human condition.

http://thesecretbookreview.co.uk

Having not read any Rachel Kushner, I requested this somewhat blindly, encouraged by a wave of Booker Prize prediction posts (which turned out to be very accurate, with the book being longlisted just one day after my request was approved!) and knowing little about what to expect. For a book billed as ‘Rachel Kushner’s rendition of noir’, I definitely did not anticipate the volume of neanderthal discussions.

This is a truly unique work, at once a spy novel and also something much deeper. Inventive, original and rightly being garnered with awards attention - this is a novel unlike anything you’ve read before.

Don’t expect an action-packed thriller, though - this is much more cerebral than I was expecting, but also a lot of fun. Sadie, our protagonist, is snarky and memorable, and wholly believable.

I’m not sure I was totally convinced by the ending, but overall had a really good time with this.

An interesting read. A philosophical spy thriller with a fascinating and original heroine and much musing on a variety of unrelated issues.

Original and challenging but worth the effort and concentration needed to finish it.

A great book. a story of espionage and intrigue lies one of a woman caught in the crossfire between the past and the future, and a profound treatise on human history. This book was insane! It was twisted, it was gripping but it was so darn good!

American, Sadie, is being paid to work undercover to spy on an environmentalist sect who may cause trouble for a large corporation in rural France. The sect have received philosophical guidance from a man called Bruno who lives in a cave and has become an expert on Neanderthals.

I quite enjoyed Bruno’s emails and learning more about our relationship with the Neanderthals. The problem with the book is that I found it hard to care for anyone but Bruno. Most of the characters are very selfish and it’s hard to emotionally invest when you don’t care enough to feel jeopardy for anyone.

The writing and descriptions are fantastic and I could clearly see the characters and their settings. I really liked the parts in Paris talking about French cinema.

After reading The Mars Room, I was excited with the blurb on this book.
However, I struggled to get into it. Kushner has obviously done her research , and I enjoyed all the information about the Neanderthals, and the stars, and the differing ways of navigating the sea in ancient times. She also writes very well
But the plot plodded; it wasn't unputdownable; I couldn't identify with (or even like) any of the characters.
The story kind of fizzled out by the end and I was left feeling somewhat disappointed.

Thanks to NetGalley for a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

Ah, I really don't know what to make of this one. Not only do I feel I don't know enough about the right things to fully understand what Rachel Kushner is doing here (felt the same way about The Flamethrowers, though not The Mars Room), I also find myself agreeing with a lot of both Dwight Garner's glowing NYT review and Brandon Taylor's scathing LRB review. So, Creation Lake is about an American spy called Sadie who infiltrates a French eco-commune and becomes weirdly seduced by the philosophy of one of the activists' mentors, Bruno, who believes that Neanderthals were better adapted than Homo sapiens to live in harmony with nature, and that modern humans won out not because they were smarter but because they were more competitive. The activists find Bruno's point of view increasingly detached from the real world, whereas he thinks their protests against corporate farming are just tinkering around the edges. One thing I definitely agree with Taylor on is that the 'scrambling of the timeline' in the first third, possibly even the first half, of this novel, makes an already deliberately brainy story unnecessarily complicated. On the other hand, when things finally get going around the midpoint, I found myself more in harmony with Kushner's intentions. Sadie is a great character; I read her as a deliberate portrait of somebody who is utterly self-centred, and who has done horrible things to people during her time undercover, but at the same time seems to vastly over-estimate her own importance and impact. It makes sense that she makes the political ideas discussed in Creation Lake ultimately all about her.

I also struggled with how to read the way Kushner writes the eco-commune. In some ways, she falls disappointingly into cliche, refusing to engage with the actual ideas put forward by the group and just sniping at the way they reproduce patriarchal divisions of labour and don't take care of their children properly. I found myself wondering if she actually agrees with Sadie that 'there are no politics inside of people... People might claim to believe in this or that, but in the four am version of themselves, most possess no fixed idea on how society should be organised'. Eleanor Catton's handling of the micropolitics of this kind of guerrilla movement in Birnam Wood is far more interesting. Taylor, again, skewers the issue nicely when he writes 'Why deal with the content of someone’s politics and activism when you can accuse them of being middle class?' On the other hand, though, I did think that Kushner was up to something more here than just the usual Communes Are Bad novel. Again, I think Creation Lake could have got on with it a bit more quickly, but by the end, Sadie's original beliefs are shattering. Honestly, I'd probably have to re-read this to fully grasp it, but it's an exciting, slippery addition to the Booker longlist.

An odd book, but I rather liked it. ‘Sadie Smith‘ is a spy sent in to infiltrate a group of French provocateurs. Their shady leader, Bruno, sends emails to the group which Sadie becomes fascinated by. These emails are rather an excuse for the author to expound on topics such as pre-history, anthropology and philosophy but weirdly I didn‘t feel talked down to, unlike The Alternatives. It kept me hooked all the way through, until the rather disappointing ending. (What is it with book endings at the moment?!)

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

I found this thought-provoking, funny, chilling, and so engagingly written that, while I noted its length, and how slowly I was reading it, I never resented it. Perhaps it helped to know that area of France a bit, and be able to indulge in sense memories of that gorgeous region as I read.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

rich with theory and thought provoking ideas, the attention to detail in Kushner’s writing is admirable. Although i did personally struggle to get stuck into this book, i have no doubts that many others would appreciate this work.

Rachel Kushner can sure write but I have to grok this book as there's so much food for thought that I have to reflect.
My only note is that the abundance of themes and reflection killed the story as it made it very slow
I will be back with a more proper review
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

3.5 stars

This is the book from the Booker Prize shortlist that grabbed my attention the most, so I wasn't really sure what to expect and I think I'm still trying to work out my thoughts! At the heart of the story is 'Sadie' who has been sacked from her job in the US and is now hired to infiltrate eco-activists in Europe, which is no easy task as they are ultra wary due to previous encounters with outsiders.

So she uses her feminine ways to find a way in, and we get to see the build up to an 'event' they have planned, although for me this often took a backseat to the 'neanderthal' chatter that ran throughout the book which came from the eco group muse 'Bruno'. She reads his emails and finds herself struck by his thoughts on those from the past, compared to human beings of now and this did prove to be quite fascinating.

A lot of the book is taken over by the rambling thoughts of Sadie, as she never seemed to pause for breath! She had an opinion on everything, and while there were other characters around her we never really got to learn more about them and their motive for being part of the commune/eco group, and I did find the story getting a bit bogged down in the middle with not really going anywhere. But it still made for an intriguing read.