2024 Booker Longlist: Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

by jenp27 on September 4, 2024

Book 10/13 for our Booker Panel is Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner. Thank you to Scribner for providing several of us with an advanced reader copy.

Cover blurb: Creation Lake is a novel about a secret agent, a thirty-four-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics, bold opinions, and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France.

“Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader.

Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.

In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past.

Just as Sadie 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.

You can purchase a copy of the book here.

Keep reading to find out how our panellists rated this book.

Tracy’s Thoughts: I was so looking forward to this book. I have enjoyed Kushner’s books in the past, and this looked to be a fun spy novel with humor sprinkled in. There were a few chuckles, but this wasn’t a lot of fun. My intellect isn’t MENSA level, so either I couldn’t follow what Kushner was trying to do (Neanderthals??) or she completely missed the mark. But her writing style is quirky and interesting, and the main character wasn’t Bridget Jones, but she wasn’t James Bond either.

Writing quality: 3/5
Originality: 4/5
Character development: 3/4
Plot development: 2/4
Overall enjoyment: 1/2
Did it deserve a spot on the longlist? No. This felt incomplete to me somehow, and there were other more deserving books.
Total: 13/20

Nicole’s Thoughts: I was not looking forward to this, so I was moderately surprised I made it through and didn’t hate it. I’m not a fan of Kushner and I don’t understand Booker’s fascination with her. This was an interesting concept – I enjoyed the parts of the story which existed. The first 20% of the book read like the author’s research notes. So boring. Then as we went along it was a tiny bit of story with a lot of tedious philosophical musings. There wasn’t a likeable character in the bunch – so when somebody you hate starts meandering, it grinds. This book took way longer to read than necessary. We don’t (and shouldn’t) talk about Bruno. Ugh. The worst of the lot.

It’s a bit of a departure of “type” from some of the others on the list, which was refreshing. It was creative, and I laughed twice – I kept track. I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody though.

Writing quality: 3/5
Originality: 4/5
Character development: 3/4
Plot development: 1/4
Overall enjoyment: 1/2
Did it deserve a spot on the longlist? No.
Total: 12/20

Jen’s Thoughts: I am typically very closely aligned to Tracy when it comes to reading tastes, but for this book our opinions diverge. I quite liked this book. I find Kushner’s writing style to be pretty funny. Her observations (made through her characters) made me laugh frequently throughout the book and I had a grand old time reading the novel. I’ve read the complaints about the ending but I actually thought it was well suited to the themes brought up throughout the book. The booker judges clearly pushed forward books that contain a lot of reflection, philosophical musings, and long detailed intellectual meanderings. This book certainly has some of that through Bruno’s emails and the main character’s contemplation of those big ideas, but for me it worked well and was tied with a plot that actually went somewhere. So in the case of this book, I found the musings quite interesting and well integrated into the storyline. I loved the writing and thought it was a fun read. I’m not sure about its merit as a booker nominee but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Writing quality: 5/5
Originality: 3/5
Character development: 2/4
Plot development: 4/4
Overall enjoyment: 2/2
Did it deserve a spot on the longlist? I feel similarly about this one and Wild Houses in that I enjoyed them both but not sure I would have put them on the longlist. I’m glad it made the longlist because I had fun reading it. I’m 50/50 on whether it deserves a place.
Total: 16/20

Lisa’s Thoughts: I did not really like previous books by Rachel Kushner, and so I was surprised to find that this one really grabbed me and pulled me in. It was a relief after some of the previous Booker nominees I read! In this book, I loved the seeming contradictions between a person living in a cave, providing philosophical musings… by email. These interspersed emails were necessary to round out the story and for the eventual growth of the main character. Morality is a major theme in this book — what is right and wrong? Who is behaving immorally? The state who wants to build? The people who want to protect their land? The people who come from far away to join them? The cave-dwelling philospher who encourages them? The spy who infiltrates the community at the behest of some shadowy non-governmental actors? I’m still thinking about these complexities.

Writing quality: 4/5
Originality: 5/5
Character development: 4/4
Plot development: 3/4
Overall enjoyment: 2/2
Did it deserve a spot on the longlist? Yes, it is both well-written and original.
Total:18 /20

Have you read this one? Let us know what you thought.

Our panel’s final rankings