I enjoyed the writing about Neanderthals and the reflections on civilisation/capitalism/climate but the glacial plot meant this didn't really work as a novel for me. I get that the narrator is supposed to be an unappealing character but the digressive style meant it was a bit like listening to your drunk uncle moaning about the horrors of a recent foreign holiday. Commentary on everything from the overselling of Italian wine to the culinary offer in French service stations to the willingness or otherwise of children to eat ice-cream cones just left me cold.

This is definitely not a taut literary thriller, though it has some thought-provoking ideas which will appeal to readers who like challenging literary fiction.

‘Sadie Smith’ is the American girlfriend of Lucien Dubois, who in turn is a longtime friend of Pascal Balmy, leader of the Le Moulin commune in the French countryside—and suspected eco-terrorist. In reality, she’s an undercover operative hired by a private party to find proof of the group’s sabotage (or to nudge them into doing so, if necessary). Quick to judge, acerbic in her assessments, Sadie is sharp, cynical, pragmatic: “You people are not real to me. No one is.” When her job here is done, she’ll vanish, leaving Lucien to mourn a love that never existed.

Interspersed with her operation are the emails of Bruno Lacombe, a quasi-religious figure to the Moulinards, which range from digressions on Neanderthal culture to French history to the spiritual effects of true darkness. A cave-dwelling recluse whose life has been dogged by death, at first his emails are nothing more than a chance at insight into the group’s guiding philosophy (and whether they can be manipulated into taking violent action). But as Sadie spends more time in the rural Guyenne, she finds herself drawn to these missives and their reassessments of human nature.

One early review called this book Kill Bill if written by Le Carré. This is neither a revenge story, nor necessarily stylish. Rachel Kushner underlines the grime and doubt and ruthlessness of this private-style espionage, untethered to even the pretence of moral values. Her taut prose and pitched-down voice do occasionally drift into repetition, but there’s always an image or an insight to keep this story from falling into tedium or predictability. Some repetition has a purpose—I’m dancing around the details, because they do deserve to be experienced first-hand. This also isn’t to say there’s no glimmer of hope. A seam of humanism runs through the book, exemplified in Bruno, always present, never seen. Kushner’s world of lies and the wider forces which enable its existence are a dirty business; there is (Bruno says, she says) another way to live and to be. This is about as optimistic a message as Sadie could hope for, under the circumstances.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake offers a thrilling yet introspective journey into the life of Sadie Smith, a freelance undercover agent with a questionable backstory. As Sadie navigates a high-stakes mission in France, the novel blends espionage, deception, and sharp psychological insight. Sadie is far from the typical spy, using her linguistic prowess and internet hacking skills to infiltrate her target, all while grappling with the philosophical implications of Neanderthal-like traits found in her hacked emails.

Sadie Smith, the book’s main protagonist and narrator, is a freelance undercover agent operating under this pseudonym. Although the reader is told her backstory, as far as her work contacts know, she comes from a place in California which in fact has no inhabitants. From the outset, this had me wondering how much of her narrative is reliable, even when she seems to be taking the reader into confidence.

Leaving aside the question of her reliability, Sadie has a thrilling story to tell as she works in France on a politically and ecologically sensitive assignment for an unnamed client involving espionage, deception, seduction, and expert internet skills, such as hacking into emails. It helps that she is physically attractive, rich, a gifted linguist, and is adept at “reading” people. As the novel progresses, the reader learns the content of many of the hacked emails which compare the attributes of Neanderthal people to those of contemporary humans, and which influence Sadie’s actions probably more than she realises. The limestone scenery of this part of France is perfectly depicted.

Although my interest flagged a little about two thirds of the way through the novel, I was already enough invested in the outcome of Sadie’s assignment to continue with its increasingly thrilling progress, and its completion did not disappoint. But where this actually left Sadie emotionally and psychologically is left for the reader to decide. Four and a half stars, rounded to five.

A bizarre novel about a spy Sadie, who infiltrates a group of radical hippes. This however is nothing like Ian Fleming, instead we get long periods of internal thoughts, insight about Neanderthals, the Cagots, Polynesian sailors. This is a book examining the alternative ways of life and how the knowledge these people obtain is discredited, it is a book about power and control. Very interesting and thought provoking, Sadie, Lucien and Bruno were interesting characters well drawn, the remaining characters were not so, minimal effort was made with the plot and the book was far too long for its content. Really enjoyed this one, but it is a long way from perfect.

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner is an ambitious and inventive, propulsive and thought-provoking read.

‘Sadie Smith’ is a hot spy. She’ll remind you that she’s hot don’t worry! This has gotta be satire of men writing women and ya know, breasted boobily.

Anyway! Sadie has been struck off by the government so instead is employed by private organisations. For this job she has to infiltrate a group of alleged eco terrorists in the south of France & convince them into violent action.

It all sounds like a great premise! Unfortunately I found it altogether quite dull. There are so many tangents usually spurred on by Sadie reading emails from a man affiliated with the group, Bruno. He is obsessed with Neanderthals and early man, which Sadie soon finds herself very intrigued by. I was not intrigued.

At over 400 pages I did slog through this. It was funny in parts! It was a little thrilling in parts! And I wish those parts were leant into more. A miss for me unfortunately.

Having previously read The Mars Room and really struggling with it, I was keen to give Kushner's work another go. But sadly, after reading Creation Lake, I think that her work is just not for me. I struggled again to get into this book and found that the story dragged and was all over the place in parts. I was just left feeling confused by the end.

Although I think this book itself is very interesting and well crafted, with a lot of intrigue, drama and well-rendered characters, I was somewhat let down by the end of the book, which I feel was an abandonment of its core arguments and narrative, and it left me a little short-changed, even though I think so much of the book is very well done.

I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

An intelligent, carefully-crafted play on an existential thriller partly inspired by Rachel Kushner’s fascination with leftwing, French crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette. Set in 2013, Kushner’s narrative centres on an agent provocateur known, for now, as Sadie Smith. Ignominiously fired from her job as a covert operative for internal American intelligence, Sadie’s currently selling her services to the highest bidder. All we really know about Sadie is she’s 34, fluent in several European languages, and once embarked on a doctorate in rhetoric. The perfect background for her current assignment working for a shadowy grouping of powerful, monied figures. Sadie’s journey begins in Paris where she presents as the stereotypical, wide-eyed American abroad, rather like Sally in <i>The Dud Avocado;</i> but it’s a ruse that provides access to her targets through a complex process of seduction and infiltration.
Sadie’s expertise lies in environmental activism, what her employers would label eco-terrorism. She’s been charged to gain access to a communal farm overseen by faded politico Pascal Balmy who’s suspected of orchestrating a series of attacks on French infrastructure: forms of industrial sabotage intended to disrupt the forward march of agribusiness. During background surveillance, Sadie manages to hack Pascal’s email accounts, monitoring his contact with Bruno Lacombe a philosopher/anthropologist who’s retreated from the world, installing himself in a cave on his property close to Pascal’s group in southern France. Pascal and Bruno are both broadly anti-capitalist, direct descendants of the radicalism of May ’68. But while Pascal remains convinced that capitalism can be fought from within, building on the situationist ideals of Guy Debord, Bruno’s drawn to a kind of anarcho-primitivism, anti-civilisation stance. He’s become obsessed with the paths not taken: prehistory and the culture of the Neanderthals, a “world before the fall, before class and domination.” For Bruno disrupting capitalism is no longer the answer, what’s needed is a shift in consciousness, to think beyond and outside it.

Although it’s effective read purely as a slightly-satirical variation on a conventional spy story, Kushner’s novel works well as a loose companion piece to her earlier <i>The Flamethrowers:</i> where that examined Italian leftist politics in the seventies, this could be interpreted as an exploration of what came next. Kushner’s piece is impressively researched. She expertly interweaves fact and fiction indirectly referencing: Deleuze’s nomadism; key political texts like <i>The Coming Insurrection, </i> infamous journal <i>Tiqqun;</i>and elements of French social and political history from the climate change activism that led to the formation of Les Soulèvements de la Terre (Earth Uprising) to the fight for Larzac and the Tarnac Nine; violent police tactics and growing clashes over megabasin projects in rural France. Many of her fictional characters have real-life counterparts: Bruno parallels aspects of philosopher Bruno Latour; hapless politician Platon is a version of the controversial Manuel Valls; a prominent French novelist Michel Thomas conjures provocative author Michel Houellebecq. Thomas’s cameo also establishes a link to Houellebecq’s <i>Serotonin</i> which Kushner’s story sometimes overlaps.

Sadie’s an intriguing creation, world weary and cynical, she views the world as chaotic and ultimately lawless – she sometimes reminded me of Musil’s man without qualities. Like Reno in <i>The Flamethrowers</i> she often appears less engaged in action than in representing and interpreting everything around her. And like Reno years before, she soon realises women in far-left circles are routinely relegated to the periphery, the women of Pascal’s commune are mostly assigned to childcare and serving coffee. A situation that suits Sadie’s agenda, making her far less likely to be fingered as a potential saboteur. Although Sadie’s experiences will take her in a wholly unexpected direction, one which elegantly solves the mystery of Kushner’s ongoing juxtaposition of Bruno’s musings and Sadie’s activities. Although this may prove a little too dry for some readers, and I don't entirely agree with Kushner's underlying arguments, I found it surprisingly absorbing, inventive and insightful.

I absolutely devoured this book! It took me a couple of chapters to get into it but once I did I couldn't put it down. It wasn't only the plot that kept me turning the pages but the discussions on early humans, what it means to be human, society under late-capitalism, and imagining a world post capitalism. Rachel Kushner's writing is hypnotic, I've never read anything quite like Creation Lake, it was masterfully done. If you're on the fence about picking up Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, I'd highly recommend giving it a go, I'm so glad I read this excellent novel.

As of August 2024, Rachel Kusher has made the Booker longlist for her new novel, "Creation Lake." Kushner's work tells the story of a spy named Sadie (her code name rather than her real name) who must infiltrate a potential eco-terrorist organisation in France. From the beginning, we know that she is a shape shifter who takes on a new identity with every assignment. She becomes obsessed with the philosophy and emails of Bruno Lacombe--the man who serves as a confidante/inspiration for certain members of this environmental group. As she begins to infiltrate this French group, she questions her past assignments as a spy (including charges of entrapping people) so that the narrator unconsciously seeks to find her true self in this new assignment. She sees Bruno's emails as a way to understand the life she has chosen.

Kushner writes beautifully, and the novel works on a sentence-by-sentence level. Kushner builds the tension for how this new assignment will end. However, the book ultimately disappointed me. I wanted to like "Creation Lake," but I felt that the philosophical elements of the novel did not always mesh with the spy/ecoterroism angle. Kushner moves from the new assignment to the narrator's past to Bruno's philosophy. We hear from Bruno a lot, and it becomes oppressive after a certain point. I wanted to learn more about Sadie and less about Bruno's thoughts on every possible subject. We learn more about Bruno than the narrator, and I wish it had been the reverse.

Rachel Cusk is one the most brilliant writers. I loved all of her previous works- they are individual, inventive, inspiring and beautifully written. While there's lots to admire in Creation Lake, I felt the plot and characters struggled under the load of research and history. Rather endless descriptions overwhelmed funny and insightful passages.
thank you for the opportunity to read- I learned much but didn't love the experience

<i>"We were doing what European activists spend hours and hours doing: simply talking."</i>

This was often good, sometimes okay, and I enjoyed reading it.

I thought the beginning was really strong, the middle a bit confusing but still good (setting up a lot of chess pieces), and the ending a bit disappointing. *looks around furtively before whispering the next part* I've wondered previously if the really "big" "famous" writers are not really edited anymore? IDK, maybe I was unfairly thinking of <i>Birnam Wood</i> when reading this, which I think just NAILED the ending so well.

My favourite parts of the book were Bruno's emails. If this was Kushner's main reason for wanting to write this book (to have philosophical musings from an 'anticiv' character living in a cave and obsessed with the Neanderthals) I was 100% on board. If this guy existed IRL I would 100% subscribe to his Substack, lol. I also liked the Sebaldian-like essays part about random elements of French culture/history, Polynesian sailors, politics + political action, etc. It would be interesting to compare this book to <i>Telex in Cuba</i> in terms of the theme of revolutionary external action vs. 'plumbing' inside yourself, doing the internal reflective work.

I also really liked the 1st-person voice and her character in general. <i>"My banal and conventional looks have served me well. People think I look familiar. Have I met you? they ask. But I'm merely what white women are meant to look at."</i> I loved the scene in the beginning where she pees on the side of the road and sees a pair of women's underwear, and thinks about the kind of woman the underwear might have belonged to: <i>"Her world is full of disposability."</i>

I was often confused by the timeline/the number of characters in this but I think the Kindle formatting of my ARC might be to blame for this (I don't think it was showing the formatting correctly i.e. page breaks etc). Also my brain is just not what it once was due to hormones. I didn't let being confused bother me, I just read on in blissful tranquility.

I thought the book could have done a better job of having more satisfying dramatic pay-offs but perhaps I was 'tricked' into reading this as a thriller. I liked how Kushner was paying attention to entertaining the reader throughout (this is something I think <i>The Mars Room</i> did SO well) but the final 20% dropped the ball on this a bit imho.

Questions I had (SPOILERS):
<spoiler>- The guy she was having an affair with and the confrontation with his wife - I felt like this could have had more of a payoff/effect on the story, particularly in the final climatic sequence
- What about the couple (Mao I and Mao II)? What was the point of them?
- The daughter and her truffle-hunting pig... really seemed like they just kind of disappeared from the story? Seems like her main role was to lead Sadie to Bruno's house?
- The American with the liver condition (Burdmoore) that she recruited to be the assassin - I didn't understand why he was like listening to her????? When she recruited him to be part of her plan? As a 'newcomer' to the commune, I didn't understand/find it believable why anyone would see her as having 'authority' in this way (I may have missed a beat in this regard). But his final confrontation with her at the protest was really confusing to me (when he's like "are you nuts?" after she hands him the gun) - so was he just playing along with her the whole time and was never actually 100% on board?
</spoiler>

Overall I'm glad I read this but I don't know if I would go out of my way strongly recommending it to people (like I do with <i>Birnam Wood</i>). But if you're a Kushner fan there is a lot to enjoy here! Definitely one of the most substantive, skilled, and interesting writers of our times!!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

<i>"Love confirms who a person is, and that they are worth loving. Politics do not confirm who a person is. People might claim to believe in this or that, but in the four a.m. version of themselves, most possess no fixed idea on how society should be organised... What is it people encounter in their stark and solitary four a.m. self? What is inside them? Not politics. There are no politics inside of people. The truth of a person, under all the layers and guises... the quiet truth... is a substance that is pure and stubborn and consistent. It is a hard, white salt."

"The point of this maxim was that bringing down capitalism would require a more robust imagination. But just because something is harder to imagine does not mean it's correct."

"'To live in a cave and renounce technology, renounce everything, that's like' - he laughed - 'about the most modern thing a person could ever do.'"</i>

Although the book read itself quite easily, I have not really enjoyed this book. I feel that the text on the back cover is not summarizing properly the story. I was constantly waiting for something that finally didn't really happened. It is, I realize after my reading, not the kind of story I usually read and appreciate. Thank you Random House UK Vintage for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Creation Lake is an ambitious and propulsive spy thriller which explores ecology and human history.

The narrator, known only to us as Sadie Smith, is an undercover agent working for shadowy corporate interests who has been tasked with infiltrating Le Moulin, a commune of radical eco-activists in a remote part of France in order to entrap them into committing terrorist acts. In order to get close to the group's founder, Pascal Balmy, Sadie ends up seducing his childhood friend Lucien, a film-maker. As well as involving herself in the life of the Moulinards, she becomes fixated on Pascal's e-mail correspondence with the older reclusive figure of Bruno Lacombe, who now spends most of his time underground exploring the vast network of caves around his farm and ruminating on the 'Thals' (Neanderthals) who, Bruno argues, were possessed more sophistication than they have been given credit for,

There is much to enjoy and appreciate in this novel, not least Sadie's narrative persona - on the outset she is totally detached, self-reliant, amoral and highly skilled, but different facets emerge as we learn more of her back-story and she becomes more immersed in the world of the Moulinards and Bruno's e-mails, which form a large proportion of the text. This is also a profound philosophical and political novel which asks big questions about what it means to be human and our relationship with the earth. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

First of all, potential reader, this is the type of review where the reader’s personal tastes
The pros: Eco-terrorist group; a cult, and a former FBI agent working in the private sector now, trying to infiltrate it. She is fluent in multiple languages (a pro as a character trait. and a must in her case). Her voice is peculiar and distant in the beginning. So, to sum up, the premise and the setting of a French commune are cool, as well as someone spying them.
I enjoyed Kushner’s prose (my first read of her novels, as far as I remember). It is ‘alive’ and modern.
The anthropological subplot.
The room for improvement: This part is personal. I understand why Bruno makes use of astrology, but since he becomes the main voice later into the novel and I couldn’t care less about astrology, it distracted me.
I expected more thrill, an even and progressing thrill and horror throughout/till the very end, and a slightly different pacing.
I also wanted to get to know Sadie and Bruno more. To be fair, we get glimpses of both characters’ back stories, but I like more in-depth narratives.

3.5 rounded down because of my personal preferences, but for what it is, this is an enjoyable and clever read and deserves much recognition.
Plus, now I am curious about Kushner’s previous work, and will seek them.

I love Rachel Kushner's voice -- to some I've spoken to it apparently comes across as a sort of non-style, but for me it's an incredibly impressive vehicle that can accommodate massive narrative payloads, as it does here. Creation Lake is perhaps slightly too busy, but it's often brilliant, and deserves to be on the Booker Prize shortlist. Thank you NetGalley for an advance reading copy of this book.

Long-listed for the Booker Prize, Rachel Kushner's latest novel, Creation Lake, is a tour-de-force of storytelling. Sadie Smith, our central character, infiltrates an eco-commune in France as they maybe about to commence acts of violence. This makes it sound like a thriller, though, which will disappoint readers coming to this novel looking for thrills. What Kushner does instead is ruminate on various themes - anthropology, ideology - and thought on where the human race has been and where it is headed. It is a complex novel, full of deep, raw energy, and one I was thoroughly engaged with. It might not be as successful, ultimately, as The Mars Room, but still marks her out as one of the interesting writers working today.

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024. This is a book that seems to mix the idea of a spy thriller with huge sections that discuss anthropology to name but one. Our narrator, who is in my opinion unreliable, is Sadie Smith. At least that is the name she is using at the moment. She is a former spy who was sacked from the federal agency she was working for and in now freelance. We don't know who has employed her, but her job is to infiltrate a sort of ecoterrorist commune that is working to stop corporate farming. The group's mentor is a man who has taken himself off to live in a cave and who hasn't been seen for years. He communicates with the group by email and talks about Neanderthals, astrology, stars, and non-violence - something at odds with Sadie's mission which seems to be not only to find out what the group is planning, but at the same time manipulating them to act as her employers want them to do which even means the killing of a government minister. Sadie hacks into these emails and these long sections look at how for the future, humans must looks back at the past and we see Sadie becoming taken with them. It is not so much a thriller - we watch Sadie as she infiltrates the group and how she uses all the means at her disposal to 'get in with' the right people - even sex. We get a little of some of her 'past lives' and how one incident might be coming back to haunt her, but overall you never really get to know her - but isn't that the whole purpose of being a spy - to drift in and out leaving very little trace. There is some action at the end of the novel but I think this is more - through the long emails, a contemplation of modern life and whether we are better off than the Neanderthals who lived with nature and the earth. An interesting read.