From a women’s prison in California’s Central Valley to an elite community in 1950s Cuba, novelist Rachel Kushner is a master of the singular setting and bold protagonist. Creation Lake is no exception and, in fact, raises the stakes with its cerebral take on the spy thriller.
Brainy, ruthless and beautiful, Sadie Smith (not her real name, mind you), has made a career of undercover work exposing and identifying radical activists. Once an employee of the U.S. government, she’s gone freelance and is working for a foreign conglomerate, trying to push eco-protestors into committing acts of violence. Sadie’s latest mark is an artsy, privileged Frenchman, Lucien, who ‘met’ Sadie in Paris. Believing that their encounter was a happy accident, Lucien has asked Sadie to accompany him to a small village where his family owns property and his school friend Pascal leads Le Moulin, a small agricultural cooperative protesting corporate farming. Lucien hopes Sadie can help them translate their ideas for an English-speaking audience; Sadie’s goals are a bit different.
The Moulinards of Le Moulin, a sketchy and disorganized bunch at best, draw influence from an older revolutionary, Bruno Lacombe, who communicates only through rambling philosophical emails sent from an underground cave. Skeptical of all modern interpretations of civilization, Bruno believes that cultivating our Neanderthal characteristics might be the only way to survive. Despite her cynicism, Sadie is drawn in by the purity of Bruno’s ideas and by the extreme choices he’s made for his life, choices that force her to reconsider her own.
Creation Lake is no Emily in Paris: Sadie’s corner of France is stale baguettes, superhighways, cheap wine and Guns N’ Roses cover bands. Sadie herself is no less acerbic; her only weakness seems to be a reliance on booze and vanity over her surgically enhanced (but tastefully so, she reminds us) bosom. Kushner has taken the bones of the traditional spy novel and spun it into something that is as thought-provoking as it is fun, an intellectual thriller that deviously suggests there could be another fate for our disaster-bound species, should we take the time to think it through.
