In her latest novel, Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner treats us to a cynical, shifty first-person protagonist who must pursue her work using a series of assumed names. One thing on this job that diverts her: a series of email missives from a onetime Paris radical (now retired from trying to overthrow governments) who tries to guide a group of younger, sort-of like-minded activists in rural southwest France. The emails are long and full of philosophical and scientific reflections; as part of her undercover job our narrator intercepts them, and finds the the man who writes them, a fellow-traveler-emiritus named Bruno, somewhat inspiring. In fact, these detailed emails carry much of the thematic weight and depth of the book.
Our protagonist infiltrates a hippyish commune in the Guyenne region; she’s fluent in French, but retains the accent of her native U.S., which probably puts the natives a little more at ease, because the poor accent would make sense. The commune plans a protest and a blockade at an agricultural fair—they’re opposed to the overreaching state plan for hijacking the area’s groundwater: to siphon it into vast catchment basins for eventual state-supported agribusiness use.
So, this caper novel includes a number of email lectures from the eminence grise agitator, enjoyed by our covert agent but abjured by their intended audience, the young cadre of activists. She also uses them to glean clues for what these youthful disciples/agitators are planning and when they’re planning it. One understands the potential tie-in of these epistles to the plot, but it’s tenuous at best, principally because the email lectures devolve into lunatic ravings at a couple of points. The author may have intended an independent critique of the anti-establishment group of young people, but the older influential patron loses credibility, and any tension between the two sets of aims fails. If she wanted to illustrate the hopelessness over the decades of overthrowing capitalism, she succeeds much better.
With a protagonist who is unsympathetic until the very end, an out-of-touch mentor who disqualifies himself from mainstream thought and behavior, and a listless band of protestors living an agrarian bad dream, there is little to engage the reader. The plot is balanced and mildly suspenseful, and I appreciated a few of the more caustic observations made by the first-person narrator. A disappointment.