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Creation Lake

The addictive New York Times bestseller from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author

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Creation Lake

By: Rachel Kushner
Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
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Brought to you by Penguin.

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024**

Seductive and cunning American spy-for-hire Sadie Smith has been sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France.

Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists influenced by the beliefs of an enigmatic elder, Bruno Lacombe, who has rejected civilisation, lives in a Neanderthal cave, and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism.

Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and finds Bruno’s idealism laughable, but just as she is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.

Beneath this a taut, dazzling 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.

'The most exciting writer of her generation' BRET EASTON ELLIS

'Reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture' HERNAN DIAZ

'Compulsively readable... Kill Bill written by John le Carré' OBSERVER

©2024 Rachel Kushner (P)2024 Penguin Audio

 Espionage Genre Fiction International Mystery & Crime Literary Fiction Mystery Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense Women's Fiction Witty
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Critic reviews

One of the best books of the year... ambitious, intelligent and gripping... an expertly slick thriller... Kushner pulls off a remarkable feat (Philip Womack)
Rachel Kushner may have written the novel of the year... A remarkably original book (Rachel Connolly)
Kushner is one of America's greatest living authors
A novel of ideas about nothing less than civilisation itself, delivered in the guise of a thriller – the result is profound and wickedly entertaining
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, which surprised me a lot, because I did not suspect what Rachel Kushner was really up to all along. (Louise Erdrich)
Hugely enjoyable… Creation Lake is a smart, funny novel that dares to contemplate the void of uncertainty where we all stand
A philosophical novel of ideas wrapped up in a spy caper… Irresistible
A dazzling, genre-defying novel, satirical yet profound
Wild and brilliantly plotted… Think Kill Bill written by John le Carré: smart, funny and compulsively readable
Kushner has proved to be one of America’s most intellectually curious novelists....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...vital and profound
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sadly I didn't get on board with this book. I found the story uninteresting and failed to understand the connection between the main plot and the extensive philosophical meandering of the Bruno character. Sadie, the main character, felt flat and flawed, here a beer drinking, fake breasted, cynical seductress, there a deep thinking, open minded apostle to an old man she's never met, whose historical and philosophical teachings somehow hit a nerve woth her for no apparent rationale. I found this confusing.
the narration is pretty annoying, the narator employing this weird, robotic cadence that renders flat any attempt to bring this audiology and its cast of characters to life.

Unconvincing story and flawed protagonist

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The book itself is extraordinary. The narration nearly killed it. It is so monotonous and slow. I found myself wondering if it was AI and if not, had the narrator even read the book. I couldn't believe it when I spotted that the narration was by the author.

At 1.3x speed, the narration was tolerable, and I did make it to the end. It's a beautiful and amazing book, that deserves a better recording.

speed up narration

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Intelligence is a weapon, and Sadie knows how to employ it with cold precision and an air of superiority. Intellectual superiority is a theme in this strange soup of a book, which left me feeling like a fish on a hook from the lake that Sadie spends time at while she infiltrates a French environmental activist commune, finding her way into people's heads and beds, whilst pursuing her own agendas. I am all for a calculating and ruthless female protagonist but Sadie is detached and in many ways devoid, filling her time manipulating almost anyone and everyone.

Her only real fixation is on an aged and mysterious activist named Bruno who she only knows via a hacked email account. His treatises on the truth of the neanderthal, histories on ancient civilisations and our western assumptions of superiority are peppered like university lectures throughout the novel, and informs Sadie's framing of her own story, feeding the intellectual curiosity that is required to outsmart, snare and convince her prey, and to justify and position herself, to set her above the mileu she is ensconced with.

It's a lovely unrequited affair of sorts, as Sadie critically evaluates her world in relation to Bruno and his acolytes, an empty vessel shuffling through philosophy and experiences seemingly looking for existential meaning that elevates a life that casts all this aside at a whim.

A very beautifully described but slow thriller (not too many thrills) that almost languishes in its self-reflective athletics. Sometimes intellectual curiosity can feel a chore, and this elevated spy story , like Sadie herself feels just a bit too self-satisfied in its superiority.

intelligence Ain't Everything

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Highly annoying protagonist who has little depth and little character development. Some clever ploys but all in all she has written much better books and with a town out there to read, why waste your time.

Thin cliches and stereotypes

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It’s brilliantly written and I found the character of Sadie interesting and well drawn. But overall it felt more like a demonstration of research than a novel so I learned stuff but didn’t feel or care much.
This fit the character but, on top of the very detailed, slow story, made for near boredom on occasion.
I also had very mixed feelings about the narration.

Admirable and impressive but hard to care about

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