CREATION LAKE by Rachel Kushner — reviewed by Stella

Love her or hate her, you will enjoy Sadie! Sadie Smith (not her real name) is undercover. She’s out to find the dirt on the eco-radicals; and if she can’t find some, she’ll get creative. In a small remote village, the Moulinards’ commune on a scrappy piece of land, overseen by the charismatic Pascal (ex-Paris, wealthy lad living it rough and oldest friend to Sadie’s hapless ‘boyfriend’ loser film-maker Lucien). Pascal, along with his selected idealistic brotherhood are hanging on the words of modern day hermit Bruno Lacombe. Bruno lives in a cave and emails the group his missives on human history, the superiority of the Neanderthal, the earth’s vibrations, and other intellectual musings of a madman and a sage. The concerns of the local farmers and the newly arrived eco-radicals are the same. Industry is moving in with its pumping of water and singular crop fixation. There have been isolated incidents of sabotage. And Sadie’s boss wants the commune gone. Sadie's job is to get inside and find out what they will do next. And if there is no to-do list, entice some action. Sadie arrives into a dry hot summer in her little white rental, enough alcohol to keep cool and then some, and is ‘waiting’ for Lucien on his family’s estate — a rundown dwelling now rigged up with sensors, high speed internet and other spy gadgetry. Sadie’s reading Bruno’s emails, but not getting a lot of information about a plot to take out the new infrastructure. What she is getting is a fascination for Bruno and his sideways take on humanity. She’s ready to meet Pascal and gain his trust. It helps, or so Sadie wants us to believe, that she is gorgeous. She easily gains his trust, more to do with her set-up relation with Lucien than anything she particularly does, and Pascal’s never ending ability to mansplain. The women at the commune have different ideas about their assigned roles, more akin to the old patriarchy than new ideas. It doesn’t take Sadie long to get offside with them. She’ll have to be more careful to avoid their ire and their mistrust. So what is Rachel Kushner up to here? In Creation Lake, she’s pointing a very cynical finger at our attempts to save ourselves. Here comes corruption and ego in several guises, here is the power of ideas that can alter lives, here come belief systems that fall flat, and there go the Neanderthals walking with us still (according to Bruno), and here is the biggest fraud of the lot: Sadie Smith, who will be unequivocally changed by her encounter with the Moulinards and Bruno Lacombe. This is a clever, funny book with an unreliable (and unlikeable) narrator at its centre, with ideas leaping from the absurd to the strangely believable, and a cast of characters who get to walk on to the stage and play their bit parts to perfection, with references to ‘types’ as well as particular possibly recognisable individuals. Creation Lake deals with big issues — the climate, politics, industry, and power — with a playfulness and Intelligence that ricochet much like the bullets in Sadie’s guns. It encompasses ideas about where we came from and where we might be going with wry wit but also a serious nod to our current dilemmas. It’s not all doom, and Kushner may be giving us the opportunity to leave our hermit caves and look up. Although this may be a riff on the riff. And cynicism may be the winner after all — unless radical social change can capture Sadie's imagination at 4am. You’ll have to decide.