My Five Word TL:DR Review: I Am Absolutely in Awe

I haven’t read everything by ESJM but the books I’ve read have all been really good, absolutely thought provoking and the type of story that all who read will surely take away something unique. Obviously, reading is a unique experience but this is definitely an author whose body of work is complex, often inter-connected, forthright and with the ability to conjure the time and place with seemingly minimal effort. Its frankly impressive and quite often a bit unsettling.

I am so in awe and also a little bit scared to write this review. It would be so easy to give away spoilers that I barely want to say anything at all – other than ‘read this’ – and yet at the same time there are so many things that I want to say. It’s a conundrum.

I’ve decided to cut and paste the description for the book below, then I’m going to stick to my usual style of review and try to talk about the elements of this that worked so well for me and keep everything crossed that I don’t blurt out the wrong thing.

2031. America is at war with itself, but for the first time in weeks there is some hope: the Republic of California has been declared, the curfew in Los Angeles is lifted, and everyone in the city is going to a party.

Ari, newly released from prison, arrives with her friend Gloria just as a fragile new era begins. But there are people at the party who shouldn’t be there. Something is very wrong…

Years later, living a different life in Paris, Ari remains haunted by that night. Whatever happened at the party fractured her sense of reality – and may hold the key to a very different world.

Freedom and surveillance, art and survival, love and loss in a broken world: Exit Party is the electrifying new novel from Emily St. John Mandel.

The first thing I would point out is that this book has two very unique settings. Parallel universes. Inexplicably, at the party mentioned above a number of people appear who are basically doppelgangers for others at the party, in fact two new people appear and one person from the party actually disappears. I don’t want to say any more about this because it will all become obvious as you read. As the book begins we are reading chapters from ‘Homeland’ later in the book we flip to Side B.

We predominantly follow Ari. Ari has been to prison for taking out a contract on her cousin, something that she now deeply regrets. She’s a very resourceful character, not given to hysterics and quite calm in a tough spot. Her life is almost inextricably linked with one of the ‘others’ who appeared at the party – a character called Nico. Through Ari we will witness the current chaos of the Homeland and read as she goes from problem to problem. Given that she’s spent almost 20 years in prison she seems to be going all out on making up for lost time. Anyway, I won’t go into everything she does but she certainly leads a very eventful life, always in the shadow of the ‘party’ and the strange occurences that had such an impact.

We then appear in Side B. This is a very different America. One that avoided uprisings, war and militia but in reality escaped little having simply replaced one set of horrors for another. This is an authoritarian world. On the face of it things appear really good. People seem to have good lives here, diseases such as cancer have been eradicated, great leaps in science allow the cities to be cooled more easily, the moon has been colonised, everything is so advanced – however, scratch the surface and it soon becomes apparent that this version is far from idyllic. People are watched all the time. People frequently disappear, their children are sent to state orphanages, other people who seem to have veered off track become ‘ghosts’. There is no freedom.

Two totally different experiences of, effectively, the same place split by whatever strange phenomenon is at work here (the multiverse I suppose).

The timeline jumps about. We don’t always follow a totally straight line in terms of Ari. Sometimes she reflects on things from her past and that’s when we catch up with some of her earlier exploits. Similarly when we flip to Side B the timeline is slightly earlier which allows the reader to observe what happened on the night of the ‘party. And, the character we follow in Side B is also very closely connected to Ari – but I won’t say why.

I loved the writing. ESJM has a gift with words. I think this book is only around 320 pages and yet it feels like she manages to convey so much. You understand the characters, they have different motivations and these all make them easy to identify, even when they seem, at face value, to be the same person. The worlds are so completely different and yet again she manages to bring them to life with so little fuss. It’s fascinating.

Now, every now and again I had to go off at a tangent and have a think about everything and where it was going. And this is actually something I really enjoy about this author’s work. I feel like I have to stay focused and more than that I want to figure things out – to be fair, I didn’t succeed at all in that endeavour but you have to have a try.

There are so many good things about this book, little twists on words and names, nods to current affairs, particularly in terms of future threats to society as we know it and also to the way we currently live our lives, and yet this isn’t preachy. Climate change has a dramatic impact as does the fear of a life threatening pandemic. It’s a book of opposites, the key characters, or more to the point, the ones with doubles, are opposites of each other, if one loves children in version A they are sure to be totally indifferent to them in version B. And all of this, the wonderful writing, dramatic settings and unusual characters are glued together by an intriguing storyline that I was desperate to get to the bottom of.

I don’t think I can say much more. Thoroughly enjoyable. I have no hesitation in recommending this. Much like the themes of opposites explored within the pages this is a story that is complicated and yet at the same time understandable, feels strange and yet familiar, scary and yet hopeful.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

My rating 5 of 5 stars