Spy versus rebel | Review of Booker Prize-shortlisted Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

The writer’s departure from the espionage novel format is refreshing in this narrative based on eco-terrorism, anarchism, and the murky world of surveillance

For those familiar with Rachel Kushner’s previous work, her latest novel, Creation Lake, is an extension of her signature style. She has always been adept at blending political history with personal narrative and exploring topics such as the prison-industrial complex and revolutionary movements. It’s precisely this engagement with urgent themes that perhaps earns her a spot on this year’s Booker Prize shortlist.

Creation Lake isn’t your typical spy thriller like the blurbs promise, and that’s largely because Kushner is always pushing the boundaries of form. She takes us into a world of eco-terrorism, anarchist communes, and the murky ethical boundaries of surveillance.

The narrator is Sadie Smith—a disillusioned former agent who, after a botched federal case, is hired to infiltrate an eco-terrorist commune. Her target? A collective led by a mysterious anthropologist, Bruno Lacombe, who dwells in caves and has retreated from the world to explore a consciousness beyond our temporal reality.

Undercurrents of the past

The novel doesn’t just follow Sadie’s journey but also invites readers to question the nature of surveillance, the limits of resistance, and the line between fanaticism and principled rebellion. The story doesn’t remain comfortably in the realm of spy-versus-rebels but instead winds through themes of isolation, lost ideals, and the collapsing distinction between the natural and the industrialised world.

Kushner’s departure from the spy convention is refreshing. Yes, there’s action, but it’s sparse, with much of the novel centered around Sadie’s slow, almost reluctant, infiltration of the group. Her approach is roundabout—she doesn’t dive headfirst into the commune but instead begins a relationship with someone loosely connected to it. She’s strategic, methodical, and detached, using every resource at her disposal, including her body, to get closer to the group. And yet, despite her best efforts to remain emotionally uninvolved, there’s an unsettling undercurrent suggesting her past might be creeping up on her.

Redefining the character

The author’s wariness about character is palpable in Creation Lake. She revealed in an interview her suspicion of characters having a fixed, “20th century subjectivity” — the idea that a character is a fully formed person with a clear psychological profile. In Creation Lake, we never get a complete sense of who Sadie really is. We see glimpses of her past, but much of it is obscured, leaving the reader to question whether this is simply the nature of being a spy: slipping in and out of identities, leaving no trace. Sadie’s voice on the page is more thought than speech, reflecting the author’s desire to strip away the confessional tone that often defines first-person narratives.

The character of Bruno is a fascinating one. As a former radical-turned-recluse, his philosophy is discomforting and prompts the readers to wrestle with questions about what it means to abandon the world, or to engage with it through extreme, sometimes violent, measures. His communiques from his cave, intercepted by Sadie, act as a kind of underground manifesto, a dialogue between past and present radicalism.

Behind a utopian society

Kushner’s exploration of radical movements — whether through the rural commune that clashed with the French state, or Notre-Dame-des-Landes (a real-life site of environmental resistance) — grounds the novel in a fierce sense of place. However, what stands out is not just her portrayal of history’s victories and failures, but the human impulses that drive these insurrections. Through Bruno, the anarchists’ leader who romanticises the Neanderthals and their supposed “purity”, Kushner teases out philosophical questions about the nature of resistance, sacrifice, and the pursuit of a utopian society. Bruno’s long monologues — often delusional but always fascinating — feel both absurd and profound.

Sadie is no idealised heroine; she is morally complex, occasionally cynical, and her loyalties are unclear even to herself. And Bruno’s commune, with its utopian aspirations, is far from idyllic. The author admits in an interview that the book was shaped by her time spent with friends serving life sentences, individuals who had committed acts of such finality that understanding or excusing them was beside the point.

If there’s a takeaway from Creation Lake, it’s that revolution—whether political or personal—rarely comes without contradiction. The novel leaves the reader contemplating the intersections of history, ideology, and the messy reality of trying to change the world, or oneself.

Creation Lake: Rachel Kushner, Jonathan Cape, ₹799.

The reviewer is an independent journalist based in Delhi.

Published - October 11, 2024 09:00 am IST