Review: “Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner – Double Dealing in Rural France

Radical politics, mixed-up heroines, and the threat of violence are staples in Rachel Kushner’s fiction. With her second book, The Flamethrowers (2013), she was lauded as one of the century’s great American novelists. Despite the Booker prize nomination for her third novel, The Mars Room (2018), set in a California women’s prison, she remains under the radar for many readers outside of America.

Her new novel, Creation Lake, longlisted for this year’s Booker, could change that. It’s an espionage drama filled with twisty revelations and a steady backstory unveiling. The book delves into anarchy, agriculture, and prehistory, offering a killer plot and expert pacing, all wrapped in the fun of well-crafted fiction. The narrator, Sadie, a 34-year-old American, is a memorable Kushner heroine. A polyglot ex-postgrad with a knockout figure and a plain face, Sadie is a spy for hire after being ousted by the FBI for a failed operation involving an animal rights activist.

Sadie is now in Guyenne, south-west France, tracking the founders of a radical farming co-op, Le Moulin. They are suspected of sabotaging a government-approved scheme to turn local fields into a corn-based monoculture. Her shadowy paymaster insists she finds evidence of wrongdoing; if she can’t, she has to fabricate it.

The opening chapters shift between Sadie’s journey to Guyenne and her reading of hacked correspondence between the Moulinards and their elderly mentor, Bruno. Bruno, a former 60s radical living in a cave, taps out eccentric theories on his daughter’s computer. His thoughts, which blend speculation and fact, cover real-life persecution, the Neanderthals, and the subversive power of sleep.

Sadie integrates herself into the commune disguised as a translator. Bruno’s theories, although outlandish, become intriguing as seen through Sadie’s wry summaries. The plot thickens when Sadie grows closer to Le Moulin’s leader, Pascal, a wealthy Parisian. The novel then introduces a diverse set of characters: rural locals, young intellectuals from the capital, factory workers recovering from failed strike actions, and even a serial felon from New York.

The novel’s complexity is heightened with a cameo by a thinly disguised Michel Houellebecq. Sadie herself emerges as the central drama, hinting that spies, unsurprisingly, don’t tell the full story. Her unreliable narration, tinted with her own vulnerabilities, adds tension to the narrative. For instance, she claims that drinking helps her drive better but compromises her waking schedule with Xanax and whisky.

Sadie’s CV includes hawking fake Picassos on behalf of a dealer out to discredit his rivals, and yet we can’t help rooting for her.

This book is unusual in its depiction of a villain serving powerful interests. Despite her morally compromised actions, readers are drawn to Sadie. Her past includes selling fake Picassos, but she is also an engaging narrator, full of boastful, vituperative, and wild insights. She spares no detail about her contempt for Italian food, why graffiti is worse than murder, and what constitutes “the real Europe.”

For most of the novel, the closest it comes to violence is when a sick cow is mercilessly killed. This act reminds us that what Chekhov said about a gun on stage applies to the four hidden weapons Sadie has. The last 100 pages are filled with tension, balancing peril and farce for nonstop entertainment.

• Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner is published by Jonathan Cape (£18.99).

Source: Guardian