Candi's Reviews > Creation Lake

Rachel Kushner – I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance! This is so good, guys! I picked up a discarded copy of The Flamethrowers a few months ago (why the hell was it discarded, I now ask myself!), but hadn’t yet read it. Then this one passed through my hands, and I couldn’t resist – the title, the cover, and the jacket blurb hooked me. The first page had me checking it out and bringing it home.

“Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said. He said they were prone to addiction, too, and especially smoking.”

I had to know why a novel about a thirty-four-year-old woman, an American secret agent sent to a rural commune in France, would begin with this peculiar statement about Neanderthals. Well, to be honest, I sort of guessed the link between this area of France and its prehistoric caves and the Neanderthals, thanks to Beebe Bahrami, author of Café Neandertal. However, I was super curious about Kushner’s angle by bringing up the Neanderthals in the very first sentence. If you haven’t guessed already, I’ll warn you now: this is not a typical spy thriller. But… it had me turning the pages and itching to get back to it whenever I had to set it aside. And it’s funny too, in a gloriously subtle but snarky kind of way. After reading that first sentence, nearly 150 pages later the narrator, “Sadie”, tells us this:

“I used to smoke, perhaps on account of some percentage of Neanderthal in my lineage, although I’ll never know what percentage, not wanting my DNA in any database.”

If weird little things like that make you snicker too, then we just might get along. I’m not really explaining the point of the Neanderthals here though. See, Sadie has been sent by some shadowy private sector group to infiltrate an organization of rural activists, the Moulinards, in the region to find proof of sabotage and further plans of possible subversions. Bruno Lacombe, through email communications, is a mentor to the group. Sadie, in turn, has access to these communications. Bruno Lacombe is thoroughly immersed, perhaps obsessed is a better term, with the Neanderthals and the ancient way of life. He blames Homo sapiens for the mess we are in. Lately, it’s not too hard to get on board with his way of thinking.

“The use of fire for harm instead of good seems to have taken hold, suspiciously, and damningly, just as the Neanderthals began to disappear and Homo sapiens rose up, an interglacial bully who shaped the world we’re stuck with.”

Another word about Sadie. She doesn’t give a shit about anyone, except for Sadie. And that’s what makes her such a fantastic character. I mean, we all care, arguably in varying degrees, for our fellow humans. But don’t you sometimes wish – admit it! – that you could care just a little bit less?! Okay, perhaps I’d just like to be Sadie for a day. Or two. She’s the sort of person you might also run into in a Marcy Dermansky or Ottessa Moshfegh novel, minus the undercover agent skills. She has no background that we know of, besides some previous undercover work. She has no friends or loved ones – except for those she feigns an interest in. Sex is used to get what she needs – usually more information. She’s messy, she has “conventional” looks, she likes her beer a bit too much perhaps, and she’s irreverent.

“I try to be respectful of other women’s shortcomings. The dumb luck of good looks is akin to the fact that it may very well rain on the sea in times of drought, and will not rain where it is needed, on a farmer’s crops: grace is random, dumb and random and even a bit violent, in giving to the one who already has rather a lot, and taking from the one who has been denied, who doesn’t have a pot to piss in.”

We learn a bit more about Sadie through her very remote connection to Bruno. She gets closer to him by reading his thoughts on mankind and the stars and the underground world of caves. Her preoccupation with Bruno’s emails allows us to see under her skin, if that’s even possible. I, for one, caught a glimpse of a beating heart.

As an aside, I pay little attention to prize nominees, or winners for that matter. I hadn’t been aware this was on the Booker longlist when I brought it home. And it’s a complete coincidence that I’m writing this right after the shortlist was announced! In fact, I was mid-review when I scrolled through Instagram and saw the post. Read this. It’s intelligent, invigorating, funny, and refreshingly different from the usual reading fare.

“Coincidence is a term you choose for the good work it does to cover what some part of you knows, but a part that cannot be allowed to speak. The coincidence, as an explanation for things that are mysteriously aligned, is hiding what is not a coincidence and is instead a plot.”