Creation Lake

Reviews

Kushner is one of America's greatest living authors Wild and brilliantly plotted… Think Kill Bill written by John le Carré: smart, funny and compulsively readable One of the best books of the year... ambitious, intelligent and gripping... an expertly slick thriller... Kushner pulls off a remarkable feat Kushner…[is] one of the century’s great American novelists… Her hugely enjoyable new novel…already longlisted for this year’s Booker, ought to put her firmly on the map… amazingly tense: wall-to-wall entertainment, and a real treat Rachel Kushner may have written the novel of the year... A remarkably original book A novel of ideas about nothing less than civilisation itself, delivered in the guise of a thriller – the result is profound and wickedly entertaining. At last I get to say how deeply, madly, irrecoverably I loved Creation Lake...it was all stylish and cool, and then somehow the book struck a blow to my heart, which surprised me a lot, because I did not suspect what Rachel Kushner was really up to all along. Questions of control and coercion, reality and idealism, are layered on top of Kushner’s enveloping noir. ‘Sadie’ has a brash confidence and a manner of moving through the world that is aloof in the extreme—disbanding any allegiances or affections before they can create the faintest of tethers. But Kushner’s plot—at once arid and affecting—asks just how much any human can insulate themselves Kushner’s writing is clean, tight and often very funny as she jumps between past and present but never loosens her iron grip on the reader’s attention Kushner has proved to be one of America’s most intellectually curious novelists....Creation Lake bears all the hallmarks of her inquisitive mind and creative daring... a spy thriller laced with a killer dose of deadpan wit...Kushner inhabits the spy’s perspective with such eerie finesse that you feel how much fun she’s having...the real covert operative here is Kushner, who’s never felt more cunning than in this novel...vital and profound Expand reviews