'The most fun I've ever had': Why writing about deception, betrayal became such a pleasurable exercise for novelist Rachel Kushner

Rachel Kushner can pinpoint the exact moment she figured out how to write her fourth novel, Creation Lake.

'The most fun I've ever had': Why writing about deception, betrayal became such a pleasurable exercise for novelist Rachel Kushner Back to video

The American author spent years looking for a path to her story about a mysterious American woman who infiltrates a group of eco-activists in rural France while working as an operative for shadowy, unseen powers. Kushner released both the novella, The Mayor of Leipzig, and the non-fiction collection, The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020, in 2021. But for most fans, Creation Lake is the proper follow-up to her 2018 novel, The Mars Room, a harrowing book about a young mother’s experiences in prison while serving two life sentences. The novel brought Kushner an army of new readers, gushing critical acclaim and landed on the shortlist of the Booker Prize. It also “extracted a serious cost” on her when it came to developing, writing and talking about the novel. With Creation Lake, she searched for a way to execute the story for three years. When she finally wrote what would become the first two lines of the novel, she “all at once figured it out” and found not only clarity but an unusual amount of joy.