Praise for CREATION LAKE "At last I get to say how deeply, madly, irrecoverably I loved
Creation Lake... it was all stylish and cool, and then somehow the book struck a blow to my heart."
--Louise Erdrich, Kirkus "A profound and irresistible page-turner about a spy-for-hire who infiltrates a commune of eco-activists in rural France. The prose is thrilling, the ideas electrifying."
--The Booker Prize 2024 judges on Creation Lake "
Creation Lake bears all the hallmarks of her inquisitive mind and creative daring... a spy thriller laced with a killer dose of deadpan wit... Kushner inhabits the spy's perspective with such eerie finesse that you feel how much fun she's having... the real covert operative here is Kushner, who's never felt more cunning than in this novel about the clashing ideological claims that have left us bereft at the end of time. Bore through this noir posing and wry satire of radical politics, and you feel something vital and profound prowling around in the darkness beneath."
--Ron Charles, The Washington Post "Ambitious, intelligent and gripping...
Creation Lake is one of the best books of the year so far."
--The Spectator "One of the most interesting and adept voices in contemporary fiction... Kushner's writing is clean, tight and often very funny as she jumps between past and present but never loosens her iron grip on the reader's attention."
--Bloomberg "It's suspenseful, extremely smart and brilliantly executed."
--Jami Attenberg, The New Orleans Times Picayune "An immersive novel about an agent provocateur embedded within a group of environmental activists in south-western France, and slowly becoming mesmerized by the group elder's theories about Neanderthals. It's seductive, entrancing, and quite off the wall."
--Mick Herron, The Guardian "Rachel Kushner wrote a secret agent book, and set it in France. What more must we know to anticipate it? Nothing, because no doubt, like nearly everything she writes, it will be an intellectual masterpiece while also reinventing a genre while also being wildly entertaining. That's kind of her thing."
--Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2024 "Surprising and delectable... This ecstatic vision of the collective human experience shimmers in stark opposition to the corporate plan to extract and lock up the valley's groundwater. A brain-spinning tale and searing look at our perilous estrangement from nature."
--Booklist, STARRED review "An undercover agent embeds with radical French environmentalists in this scintillating story of activism and espionage from Kushner...Most of the narrative is dedicated to the activists' philosophizing and Sadie's gimlet-eyed observations, which Kushner magically weaves together...Readers will be captivated."
--Publishers Weekly, STARRED review "Sadie is similar to Kushner's earlier fictional protagonists--astringent, thrill-seeking, serious, worldly--but here the author has tapped into a more melancholy, contemplative mode that weaves neatly around a spy story... Kushner has captured the internal crisis of ideology that spy yarns often ignore, while creating an engaging tale in its own right. A deft, brainy take on the espionage novel."
--Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review "
Creation Lake reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture. Only Rachel Kushner could weave environmental activism, paranoia, and nihilism into a gripping philosophical thriller. Enthralling and sleekly devious, this book is also a lyrical reflection on both the origin and the fate of our species. A novel this brilliant and profound shouldn't be this much fun."
--Hernan Diaz, author of Trust "By writing in the unillusioned voice of an ex-FBI agent infiltrating a bunch of rural French subversives, Rachel Kushner has cover to say whatever she damn well pleases. And because Kushner has the most bracing intelligence in American fiction, she rips the skin off what many of us like to think we believe."
--David Hare
