Creation Lake

Kushner follows her novel about incarcerated women, The Mars Room, with the story of an acerbic secret agent. Thirty-four-year-old Sadie Smith (an alias) doesn’t technically work for any government since a successful entrapment defense hamstrung her last assignment with federal contacts. Even so, she is tasked with infiltrating a French anarchist collective, employing her indisputable facility with subterfuge, her flexible moral compass, and her keen insight in the process. Sadie spies on emails from activist Bruno Lacombe, searching for hints of the group’s plans while being unconsciously affected by his empathetic, eloquent musing on the region’s history of persecution and his childhood during World War II. Her sense of connection to Lacombe subverts her motivation even as she aims to subvert the leftists he’s writing to, but Sadie’s shadowy employers demand results, creating a tension that grips listeners to the end. Sadie matches her sharp observations with cutting judgment that Kushner, who also narrates the audiobook, delivers in wry Californian upspeak, befitting a displaced American in rural France. With unhurried clarity, Kushner renders her descriptive prose accessible while evoking her protagonist’s disdainful lack of urgency.