Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake ***

I started Creation Lake with high hopes, so high that I bought the hardcover on its publication day. I had been impressed with the memorable scenes and thematic depth of Kushner's earlier book The Flamethrowers, but felt that it lacked narrative drive. Creation Lake promised to address this shortcoming with an espionage plot: an American woman infiltrates a group of French climate activists.

Alas, Creation Lake doesn't use espionage to generate suspense; instead, it uses it to explore more cerebral questions of personal identity and responsibility. The balance between action and reflection is tilted decidedly toward the latter. The narrator Sadie Smith doesn't meet her surveillance target Pascal Balmy until page 146, by which time we have heard more about the crackpot theories of Pascal's mentor than about her assignment. 

My favorite image in the book comes early. Sadie is driving from Marseille to the rural French district where Pascal's group lives:

I was on toll roads, pulling over to drink regional wines in highway travel centers, franchised and generic, with food steaming under orange heat lamps... I sampled these wines from the vantage of plastic seating overlooking fuel pump and highway. I sipped rosé from the Luberon at a clammily air-conditioned Monop' off the A55, a chaotic place where children screeched and a haggard woman dragged a dirty mop over the floor. The rosé was delicate and fruity, crisp as ironed linen. I found a Pécharmant from the oldest vintner in Bergerac at the L'Arche Cafeteria on the autoroute A7, a wine that was woody with notes of ambergris and laurel and maybe dried apricot.

I love the contrast between the industrial setting and the rich human experience, and I appreciate how the scene reflects the theme of modernity vs traditional ways of living. Another vivid image occurs about halfway through the book as Sadie walks home from the group's commune:

It was seven p.m. and the hottest part of the day, the peak temperature spike, at least forty degrees Celsius, maybe 105 in Fahrenheit, and by any measure hot as balls. Up ahead, something dropped from above and landed on the road. It was a snake. Snakes in heat waves don't coil up on tree trunks. They sleep hanging down from a branch; it's a tactic for staying cool...

I walked in the middle of the road, instead of the shade of overhanging trees, in order to avoid falling snakes.

Kushner regularly offers these kinds of meaningful images alongside her sophisticated themes. However, Creation Lake reinforces my impression that she's not great at plotting.