The Crossed Keys Chronicle

Exit Party

Cover

Emily St. John Mandel has been consistently one of my favorite writers over the past number of years. The Glass Hotel and especially Sea of Tranquility have been some of my favorite books in the years they were released, so I have been looking forward to her newest book Exit Party since I heard it had a release date, and to cut to the chase, I was not disappointed.

The story, as is often the case with Mandel’s works, involves a number of timelines and in this case even multiple worlds. As we begin, we follow Ari Waker, a recently released ex-con who is going to a house party in Los Angeles in the year 2031. It’s the first spring after the collapse of the United States, the curfew in the city has finally been lifted, and people are in a celebratory mood. Ari is joined at the party by her roommate Gloria, whose friend Kareem is the host. During the party Ari notices a person who looks just like Gloria but is wearing completely different clothes and calls her by a legal name that she never uses. Later, Ari sees Kareem coming back to the apartment, where he insists to her that something is “wrong” with the party. He had also seen duplicate people there, which unnerved him and made him leave for a bit. They both go back into the apartment, and before Ari and Gloria leave for the night they try to say goodbye to Kareem, but he’s nowhere to be found, despite having last entered a kitchen with no other apparent exit. The only thing left behind is a painting on the floor named “Swan Dive.” As we later learn, Kareem is never seen ever again.

From this simple setup the book then unfolds over the course of an additional 40 or so years into the future, as well as across a dimensional barrier into an alternate Earth. Mandel’s books often have big, mind-bending ideas in them, and Exit Party is certainly no exception. Where she really excels, though, is with her characters, and in this book she even gets to give us two versions of some of them. On ostensibly our Earth, Ari is an ex-con who later in life becomes a Parisian philanthropist. In the alternate Earth she’s an operative for the State’s surveillance apparatus who eventually has to investigate the disappearance of her friend Nico (Gloria) during the teleportation experiment. Being able to compare and contrast the characters’ personalities between the two realities was a fascinating exercise.

Mandel also continues a recent thread of the importance of water and water themes in her books. In The Glass Hotel the book opens and closes with a character who is swept into the ocean off a container ship. In her follow-up, Sea of Tranquility, water is implied in the title even though parts of the book take place on that named part of the moon, which is devoid of actual water. In this book one of the central items is a painting named “Swan Dive,” a painting from the 1960s that was a connection point between the two realities, which some of the characters believed might somehow allow passage back and forth. It depicts a pair of feet disappearing into a blue ocean. The painting was also seen in the hotel lobby of The Glass Hotel, further connecting her recent works. The book ultimately ends with a short chapter about the original artist deciding to paint the piece in the first place.

As I led with, I really loved this book. Between the world building and the jumps in the timeline and perspectives, I didn’t know what to expect next from it. If you’ve enjoyed any of her recent books, or are looking for a book that has big ideas and keeps you hooked until the end, I highly recommend it.

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