Thrilling spies, a cracking plot and endless ambition
Part gripping spy thriller, part political satire, part human history lesson: there is simply no end to Rachel Kushner’s ambition for this novel.
Surprisingly, despite being feted on home ground and previously shortlisted for the Booker Prize with 2018’s The Mars Room, the Oregon writer is not as well known on this side of the pond. But she should be and perhaps with this second long-listing for the Booker, she will get the recognition she so rightly deserves.
It’s hard to say which of this book’s many fine attributes contributes most to its ‘unputdownability’. There’s the book’s protagonist, a former FBI spy fired for her overly zealous entrapment methods and now working for shady paymasters in “the priBruno vate sector”. At present, known as Sadie Smith, she is on a mission to infiltrate Le Moulin, a group of environmental activists, living in the remote Guyenne region of south-west France.
Sadie, thrillingly cool, disdainful and observant is an incredibly moreish villain.
This is a woman who blithely tells us how, back in the States, she deliberately caused an innocent young animal rights activist to fall in love with her and made him buy fertiliser to make explosives, in order to convict someone, anyone, within the group she had infiltrated.
She tells us that when the boy faced 20 years in jail, “I even felt a twinge of guilt about this”. But she was disappointed when the court gave the two accused shorter sentences.
Seen through Sadie’s deadpan lens, this is hilariously compulsive reading. Can we really be rooting for this woman whose life is one long deceit?
Then there are The Moulinards, a commune or cult, depending on how you look at it, led by Pascal Balmy. Pascal is a charismatic rebel, of the wealthy family variety, who styles himself as the heir to the hero of 1968, Guy
Debord’s, political legacy. While Pascal leads practical operations, the Moulinard’s spiritual leader is Bruno Lacombe, a cave-dwelling contemporary of Debord’s, who communicates with the group through emailed epistles. Missives, which of course, Sadie has been surreptitiously intercepting in her research prior to her arrival within the group, posing as a translator.
In his emails, back and forth, Bruno sometimes gives practical advice, however cryptic, for political activism: “He said only a fool makes a large fire.” But it is his longer ramblings that suck the reader (and Sadie herself) in. gives detailed accounts of the history of humankind and the persecuted Cagots; he reveres the strong and intelligent Neanderthals and laments the civilisation of humans.
And because we get all of this from Sadie’s acerbic point of view rather than from the sometimes overly sentimental viewpoint of the committed ideologue, we find it all the more surprising when we’re moved by some of Bruno’s or Pascal’s notions and we find it all the more hilarious when we see how ridiculous their posturing sometimes is.
Sadie’s views on everything from pasta and Italian wines to the script for the perfunctory sex she performs with her duped boyfriend Lucien, delivered with such straight-faced aplomb, are the pivot about which this whole reading experience turns.
She says (among other casually insulting things): “Late Debord’s face had grown to resemble that of a dead goldfish clotted with scurf, and I am not being fanciful here, but forensic and precise...”
Add to all this a cracker of a plot, and some of the finest sentences in modern writing and really, what you’ve got is a picture of literary magnificence. A shortlist place should be guaranteed.