Exit Party by Emily St John Mandel review – alternate visions of post-crisis America

Is the price of stability necessarily the loss of freedom? Two possible future worlds are linked in the new novel from the author of Station ElevenIn her second novel, 2009’s The Singer’s Gun, Emily St John Mandel tells the story of Anton Waker, a young man desperate to make a break from his criminal family. His plans are thwarted by his cousin Ari, whose hard-nosed talent for operating outside the law has become a way of life. A decade later in The Glass Hotel, a painting called Swan Dive that hangs in the lobby of the luxury retreat stands as a symbol of escape from a trap that is closing. You will not need to have read either of these earlier novels to enjoy Mandel’s seventh, Exit Party, though their loose intertwining of narrative threads will provide extra pleasure and a sense of homecoming for those who have. It is also interesting to observe Mandel’s evolution from a writer of quirky tales of offbeat protagonists to a novelist whose world-spanning, politically reson