This is not Emily St. John Mandel’s first novel, but it might be her best: intimate without feeling small, lofty without seeming grand, sharp without appearing tawdry. It has entered the conversation of this season’s most eagerly awaited books, waiting on the top of fall charts. Anyone who read Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility knew Mandel had the brilliance to interpret everyday life on a speculative scale. This is even better.
We find ourselves in Los Angeles 2031. The United States is fractured by a coup and civil war. The Republic of California is seceded. The peace-keeping fleets are gone. The 24/7 curfew is over. Ari Waker exits the prison gate after serving an 18-year sentence. With a twenty-something roommate, she’s headed to a party in Silver Lake. The city is asleep in gratitudejackfruits are flowering, everyone is ready to dance, ready to cocktail, ready to remember what normal once was. And then the night shifts. Arrivals who shouldn’t exist arrive. Doubles traipse around. The cook is gone. And the lost battery of a painting has arrived. Expectation becomes suspension.
From this single fateful night, Mandel radiatesthrough the years, through the map, into competing visions of America. In one timeline, Ari moves through a broken, militia-rule America, discovering an alternative existence ina green-garbed city, like hers. In another timeline, she explores a more sinister, locked-down reflection of her country, a police-run Singapore. Doppelgngers portals flocks of crows, intelligence-gathering, and the imperceptible beat of music and nostalgia, course through each. Who is one person, Mandel asks, when the nation is fragmented? Can hope be found where the world has collapsed and authoritarian control held?
Journalists have described the book as ambitious and engaging, a summation of ten years of Mandel throughout. It links in numerous ways, though slight, to her former works, ratcheting up the knowledge of old fans while not alienating them. Mandel’s plainspoken prose is clear and concise even when the subject matter becomes massive. Mandel has explained that she doesn’t plan much, leaning instead toward letting her stories unfold as she writes. That willingness to follow where the characters lead makes Exit Party such a walk of discovery to the final pages.
Its cultural presence has begun to grow further than its initial publication. Laika has bought the series rights to adapt Station Eleven into a live action television series, a first for the studio who has previously only shot animated series. Emma Stone’s and Dave McCary’s production company has also joined as executive producers for the show. Mandel is penning the adaptation, something she “missed out on” with Station Eleven and she was eager to create. “I linked immediately with the team, and I can’t wait to bring Station Eleven to screens.”
