Resilient tale

Emily St. John Mandel's latest novel, Exit Party, has sparked fears that the book may be prophetic. Billed as $5.77 plus GST every four weeks, the novel is Mandel's seventh, following the success of Station Eleven in 2014. The B.C.-born, New York-based author explores the potential consequences of political division and societal fracture in her newest work.

Published in September by HarperCollins, Exit Party is set in two timelines - one where the U.S. has fractured into small countries following a civil war, and another where a singular, autocratic surveillance state has taken control. The novel features two timelines, with characters' doppelgängers appearing in the opposite timeline, forcing them to adapt and question their identities.

Mandel began writing the speculative fiction in 2022, while in Los Angeles between TV writing jobs. She was struck by the political division she observed in the U.S., and imagined the worst-case scenario: a second civil war. She chose Los Angeles as the setting for the novel, as she found it to be a beautiful yet foreign city to her.

The book opens at a party in L.A., where doubles of the characters begin to appear, and the host disappears. One of the main characters, Ari, who first appears in Mandel's 2010 novel The Singer's Gun, witnesses the appearance of these doubles. Ari's story has been explored in Mandel's previous works, but her role as a criminal in the book's A-side presents an interesting contrast to her role as a detective in the B-side.

Mandel's exploration of the effects of environment and upbringing on a person's choices and decisions is evident in the contrasting lives of Ari and her doppelgänger, Ibari, who becomes a state detective in the B-side. As the real-life state of affairs in the U.S. becomes more aligned with the B-side of the novel, writing Exit Party presented a challenge for Mandel.