Rezension
"Exit Party feels like the culmination of Mandel's career so far, combining the thrills and mysteries of the author s early crime novels with the expansive premises and speculative ruminations of later novels like Station Eleven. . . . Exit Party raises important questions about who people are when not just personal but societal circumstances change. As the narrator pointedly asks near the novel s close, 'Who will you be at the end of the world?'"
The New York Times
The only world-builder more efficient than Mandel may be God. . . . With the inventiveness of some crafty survivalist in our future, she welds together noir mysteries, classic sci-fi, spy thrillers, and poignant family dramas. . . . It s 1984 woven through a Möbius strip of her own boundless ingenuity. But for all those dimensional hijinks, what lingers is Mandel s poignant sympathy with these people lost in their world or another s. . . . Exit Party is the kind of novel you ll be desperate to talk about.
Ron Charles
"Terrific. . . . A book that will move you. . . . The story deepens and expands in unexpected ways, across generations, into marriages, betrayals and rare acts of decency. . . . In the world of Exit Party, through all of its tragic turns, we find Mandel at her best."
The Boston Globe
Ingenious. . . . There's comfort in Mandel's arresting vision here of a universe in which time is porous and people are duplicated in somewhat altered form. In such a universe, maybe another America is waiting to be born, too.
NPR
"An elegant, gracefully written crime story with sci-fi shadings. . . . Mandel s characters are attuned to beauty, in nature and in fine art, and her sentences share this aesthetic orientation. . . . I gulped the book down."
Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
"The world is in chaos in Exit Party, and so are the constructs of reality and linear time. From this welter of disorder, Ms. Mandel seamlessly engineers a pair of . . . Rube Goldberg-style plots. . . . Ari and her counterpart are smart, resilient, personable women who, for all their wrongdoing, have a gift for finding happiness in the midst of breakdown. The hope they represent is the stabilizing force that bridges Ms. Mandel s enterprising fiction."
The Wall Street Journal
"Breathtaking. . . . Spanning centuries and continents, this elegant, eerie puzzlebox of a novel is both a page-turner and a sharp look at the funhouse-mirror distortions of authoritarianism and political chaos. Easter egg connections to Mandel's earlier novels (including her landmark Station Eleven) will thrill devoted fans."
Oprah Daily
This urgent, unsettling novel is an addictive puzzle that maps the twinship of authoritarianism and chaos.
People
"Intricately built, dazzlingly expansive . . . . Exit Party is a hopeful novel that understands the vast, oceanic nature of possibility. In the face of nearly cataclysmic events, the primary characters endure to varying degrees. Art matters. Existence remains mysterious unsolvable as we know it to be. Will we continue to make meaning if our country faces one of the two potential futures Mandel sets out? Her answer is yes."
Alta
"Once again, Emily St. John Mandel shows us how it s done. . . . There is a depth of character development that rivals much of her best work. . . . What really matters in this novel is people, emotions, and what it means to live a good life. . . . Whether or not you ve read any Mandel, consider taking a deep dive into this."
The Brooklyn Rail
Exit Party is an original and perceptive reflection on our current world, and surely a novel everyone will be talking about this year.
Town & Country
"In this captivating read . . . it s 2031 Los Angeles and the first spring after the fall of the United States. The mood is exuberant, as troops have left the city and a curfew has finally been lifted. Ari and her roommate go to a party, but their host vanishes. While Ari tries to piece together what happened that night, a gripping narrative unfolds, spanning the globe and asking fascinating questions about resilience in a fractured world."
Real Simple
"The collapse of an entire society its politics, its rhythms of daily life doesn t happen overnight. It comes progressively, in overlapping waves, until a culture becomes unrecognizable a brutal truth at the heart of Emily St. John Mandel s masterpiece novel, Exit Party."
Sierra Magazine
An Emily St. John Mandel novel is always cause for excitement. . . . Another kaleidoscopic, genre-and-planet-spanning jewel of a book. I ll let her take me everywhere and anywhere.
Emily Temple, LitHub
"Masterful. . . . Mandel s assured tale offers bracing commentary on the dangers of divisiveness and surveillance. . . . Propulsive. . . . A tour de force."
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A glittering puzzle box of a novel. . . . [The] novel brilliantly ties the notion of parallel timelines to a political theme, positing a dark twinship between chaos and totalitarianism. . . . This is [Mandel's] best novel since Station Eleven, a cause for rejoicing among her fans and an inspiration for newbies to dive into the backlist. Both a thrilling read and a virtuoso demonstration of the moral and philosophical possibilities of speculative fiction."
Kirkus (starred review)
"As ever in her own wholly original and singular way, Mandel offers up a completely compelling, richly rendered yarn that's sure to generate both major interest and discussion."
Booklist (starred review)
Mandel always writes with clarity and precision. Her perceptive new dystopian novel explores what is lost in a rush to safety; it s a hymn to what falls when the center doesn t hold.
Library Journal (starred review)
"With Exit Party, Mandel has once again delivered the kind of book that will fold itself around you like a blanket, offering comfort, warmth and diverting strangeness through its unsettling vision of the world. . . . Her resonant emotional clarity makes Exit Party a must read, whether it s your first Mandel novel or just your latest visit to one of her worlds."
BookPage (starred review)
