Emily St. John Mandel is a rare and exciting hybrid in modern literature: a writer who crafts the ambitious plots of a science fiction or fantasy novelist and infuses them with the intimate understanding of the human condition boasted of by contemporary literary stylists. Her books are daring in their structures and aims. With Exit Party, she’s once again delivered the kind of book that will fold itself around you like a blanket, offering comfort, warmth and diverting strangeness through its unsettling vision of the world.
In 2031, the United States has fractured from war into disputed territories, but there’s good news on the horizon. In Los Angeles, curfews have been lifted, the worst of the fighting is over, and after almost two decades in prison, Ari’s been released and is on her way to a party with her roommate. But at the gathering, her sense of new possibilities takes a darker turn when someone who seems to be the doppelganger of one of the guests intrudes, acting strangely—and then, suddenly, no one can find the party’s host.
Something fractures in that moment, and it propels Ari into an uncertain fight for survival. Over the course of the next 300 pages, Mandel charts Ari’s evolution in this universe and in another one where the war went very differently. Mandel’s settings, scattered across North America and Europe, are captivating, but the most striking elements of Exit Party are the ordinary details, which capture the reality of living in a world that’s fallen apart. Ari and the people in her orbit do not exist in conditions of abject poverty or despair. Instead, militia skirmishes and supply chain shortages have become mundane. War is an inconvenience that informs not just how the characters see themselves, but how they conceive of what they could be. Mandel’s message seems to be about the unifying ennui of daily life, how we yearn for something more no matter which way the future tilts. Her resonant emotional clarity makes Exit Party a must read, whether it’s your first Mandel novel or just your latest visit to one of her worlds.