Kirkus
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At a party in Los Angeles in 2031, some guests disappear while others seem to double. The party in question—thrown by a man named Kareem after curfew is lifted in the Republic of California—will be revisited many times over the course of Mandel’s glittering puzzle box of a novel. We first experience it through the eyes of Ari Waker, a woman who’s just spent 18 years in prison for hiring someone to kill her cousin. Midway through the party, the host disappears. At the same time, one of the guests seems to be in two places at once, wearing two different outfits; another guest takes a painting off the wall and leaves. Eventually it will all make sense, and doubly so to longtime devotees of this ingenious author: The painting, “Swan Dive,” first appeared inThe Glass Hotel (2019), and is central to the plot here; there are also connections toThe Singer’s Gun (2010) andSea of Tranquility (2022). The current novel brilliantly ties the notion of parallel timelines to a political theme, positing a dark twinship between chaos and totalitarianism. As Ari’s own double eventually understands, “Strange to think there weren’t just two versions of me, and two versions of Kareem and Nico and possibly everyone else, but two versions of our country. There was a world where my homeland had fractured into disarray, and another where my homeland had closed like a fist.” Mandel’s elegant worldbuilding spans the course of a century, tracing events that occur in a domed Paris in the 2060s back to their roots in a New York apartment in the 1960s. This is her best novel sinceStation Eleven (2014), 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. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.