Biblioracle: Emily St. John Mandel proves herself a master of invention, yet again

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Entering an Emily St. John Mandel novel over her last three novels is a simultaneously familiar and utterly disorienting experience, and I, for one, have been captivated by this tension, including in her most recent effort, “Exit Party.”

Disorder is at the center of all of St. John Mandel’s books since 2014’s “Station Eleven,” which follows various characters, including a traveling theater troupe, in the aftermath of a pandemic that has resulted in mass death and depopulation. “The Glass Hotel” (2020) combines a mysterious series of events at a remote hotel on Vancouver Island with a Madoff-like Ponzi scheme that seem unrelated until they are brought into full relief. “The Sea of Tranquility” (2022) involves space travel, time travel, doppelgangers and a quest to solve a mystery surrounding a central character from “The Glass Hotel.”

“Exit Party” is another novel of disorder, organized with an “A-Side” and a “B-Side,” each of which reflects a future, semi-dystopian United States.

The U.S of the A-Side has gone through a civil war that has left the country entirely fractured, with regions governed like city-states run by heavily armed, violent militias.

In this world, Ari has just been released from a 20-year prison sentence and is living with a roommate, Gloria, in Los Angeles. They go to a house party hosted by a friend named Kareem, who is also the father of Gloria’s unborn baby. The party is a celebration of the end of foreign peacekeepers occupying the state, which will now become an independent republic.

The party is utterly ordinary until suddenly two new people arrive seemingly out of nowhere who look identical to Gloria and another guest, Saraya. Kareem disappears from the party, never to be seen again.

Ari is a lifelong schemer and criminal who seems well-suited to survival in a country without rules, falling in with a series of profiteers before ultimately running out of options and getting out just ahead of a final reckoning.

She winds up in Paris, where she reconnects with Nico, Gloria’s doppelganger from the party, who Ari understands is from another version of the world (the B-Side), a version in which there is another version of Ari herself, who goes by Ari’s full name of Ibari.

Ibari is the central character of B-Side, not a criminal, but a cop of sorts for the “Service,” which is the name for an overarching U.S. surveillance state that aims to keep order above all else, disappearing anyone who is judged as subversive. Ibari has risen in the ranks of the Service, deep inside the machinery, but a message from one of her informants that “Kareem is dying” forces her to reckon with choices made many years earlier on that night of the party in Los Angeles in another world.

The world-building is rich and economical. In B-Side, Paris is under a dome to guard against environmental disaster. A painting of a man disappearing into the water titled “Swan Dive” is in both worlds and central to the events. There are two Kareems in B-Side, who together fulfill the destiny of one man.

As complicated as this summary may seem, “Exit Party” is a character study (or studies), not a puzzle box. Yes, we are intentionally disoriented, but this disorientation is meant to serve the depth of St. John Mandel’s exploration of the intersection of our natures and our situations.

It is a story that must be experienced in full to be appreciated, and it cements Emily St. John Mandel as one of the most inventive novelists working today.

Book recommendations from the Biblioracle

John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.

1. “The Story of a Heart: Two Families, One Heart, and the Medical Miracle That Saved a Child’s Life” by Rachel Clarke

2. “Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage” by Belle Burden

3. “Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan” by Theodore J. Karamanski

4. “London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth” by Patrick Radden Keefe

5. “The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by John U. Bacon

— Mary Ann O., Barrington

For Mary Ann, I’m recommending one of the great works of narrative nonfiction of this century, “Random Family” by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.

1. “Mona’s Eyes” by Thomas Schlesser

2. “Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi

3. “The Inmate” by Freida McFadden

4. “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson

5. “My Friends” by Fredrik Backman

— Diane K., Saugerties, New York

Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel on biology and evolution, “The Signature of All Things,” feels like a good fit here.

1. “Vodka Neat” by Anna Blundy

2. “The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War” by Erik Larson

3. “The Bounty Hunters” by Elmore Leonard

4. “City on Fire” by Don Winslow

5. “The Burning Grounds” by Abir Mukherjee

— Deborah G.B., Monroe Township, New Jersey

For Deborah, some classic crime writing: “Clockers” by Richard Price.

Get a reading from the Biblioracle 

Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.

John Warner is the author of books including “More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.” You can find him at biblioracle.com.