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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/14\/books\/review\/exit-party-emily-st-john-mandel.html?emc=edit_nn_20260921&nl=the-morning&segment_id=226815",
    "parsed_content": "What to ReadFind Your Next BookFantasyScience FictionThrillersRomanceAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTFictionThis Novel Asks: Who Will You Be at the End of the World?In \u201cExit Party,\u201d by Emily St. John Mandel, two versions of America\u2019s future crash into each other.Share full articleCredit...Raven JiangBy Lincoln MichelLincoln Michel is the author of the novels \u201cMetallic Realms\u201d and \u201cThe Body Scout.\u201d He writes the weekly newsletter Counter Craft.Published Sept. 14, 2026Updated Sept. 18, 2026Buy Book \u25beAmazonApple BooksBarnes & NobleBooks-A-MillionBookshop.orgWhen you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.See more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google EXIT PARTY, by Emily St. John MandelThese days Americans of varying stripes worry the country faces a perilous future. Could the nation collapse into civil war? Or might it descend into a dystopian authoritarian state? In Emily St. John Mandel\u2019s ambitious and captivating new novel, \u201cExit Party,\u201d the answer is: maybe both.\u201cExit Party\u201d opens in a 2031 Los Angeles after \u201cthe United States had come undone following a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat\u201d where states seceded and \u201cwar had broken out within the month.\u201d But for now, the fighting is over, the curfew in the Republic of California has been lifted, and people are ready to let loose.Ari Waker, recently released from prison for attempted murder, joins her roommate Gloria in attending a party at her friend Kareem\u2019s apartment. Gloria is secretly pregnant with Kareem\u2019s child and traumatized by a loyalist suicide bombing that occurred at \u201ca crowded house party\u201d in the early days of the chaos. \u201cWhen I think about parties, I think about bombs,\u201d she confesses.Exit Party Save to your reading list:Want to readHave readAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTStill, the friends go \u2026 and then things get odd. Doppelg\u00e4ngers of some guests arrive while Kareem disappears without a trace. A painting, \u201cSwan Dive,\u201d materializes in the middle of the kitchen floor, but while Ari stares, it vanishes, \u201cblinked out of existence.\u201dThese events spawn a series of interlocking mysteries that the novel explores over 300 pages, a century of time and a large cast of characters. It is tricky to summarize this multilayered novel without spoiling the pleasures of its construction, but readers should know that \u201cExit Party\u201d takes place in two crisscrossing universes with differing dark visions of America\u2019s future. \u201cThere was a world where my homeland had fractured into disarray,\u201d one character explains, \u201cand another where my homeland had closed like a fist.\u201dIn timeline A, Ari enters the post-collapse gig economy, taking odd jobs for militias vying for control of the former states. The narrative jumps to the future, where an older and wealthier Ari has settled in the \u201celite center of Paris\u201d that\u2019s encased in a weather-controlled dome shaped like \u201ca series of giant soap bubbles,\u201d protecting the rich from the ravages of climate change and pandemics. Ari lives a comfortable life as an art collector focused on \u201cPost-Collapse Formalism.\u201d One of her prized pieces is \u201cSwan Dive,\u201d which she purchased from a desperate Gloria. Then one day she is visited by Sebastian, Gloria\u2019s now teenage son, who has come to steal the mysterious painting.ImageIn timeline B, Ibari \u2014 Ari\u2019s double \u2014 lives a quite different life. Instead of a criminal, she\u2019s a government spy in the Internal Security Service of the authoritarian United State. While other countries in this multiverse \u201ccrumbled,\u201d the State survived by knowing that \u201cthe difference between mayhem and order is control.\u201d In this future, every neighbor is watching the other and if you attend \u201cpro-democracy demonstrations\u201d you might be turned into \u201ca ghost\u201d no longer \u201centitled to a home, or health care, or the protections of the law.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTCrafting memorable characters is always a challenge, and Mandel doubles the task for herself with her two timelines. Even so, she succeeds. Her characters are distinct in both worlds as the novel explores how circumstances determine our fates. The novel also sharply renders the psychology of formerly privileged Americans in a world turned, for them, upside down. \u201cI just never wanted to be a part of history,\u201d one party guest laments.What remains muddier are the two future Americas. Similar to Alex Garland\u2019s film \u201cCivil War\u201d (2024), \u201cExit Party\u201d avoids discussing politics and ideology even when describing political upheaval and ideological struggle. America A is the product of an unexplained civil war along unclear fault lines. America B is a \u201csurveillance state\u201d of informants meeting in bureaucratic offices that could exist anywhere. Both feel more allegorical than extensions of America\u2019s specific history or its existing internecine and authoritarian tendencies, where partisan allegiances are loudly declared and surveillance is enabled via tech corporations and consumer complicity.Still, \u201cExit Party\u201d does so much so well \u2014 from tense action sequences to an inventive structure that switches up P.O.V. and form \u2014 that the novel will rightly entrance new readers while gripping Mandel\u2019s existing ones. \u201cExit Party\u201d feels like the culmination of her career so far, combining the thrills and mysteries of the author\u2019s early crime novels with the expansive premises and speculative ruminations of later novels like \u201cStation Eleven.\u201d In addition to thematic connections to her prior books, there are literal ones: Ari Waker is a central character in \u201cThe Singer\u2019s Gun\u201d and the painter of \u201cSwan Dive\u201d appears in \u201cThe Glass Hotel.\u201d\u201cIf you live long enough,\u201d Gloria\u2019s double says, \u201cyou become a migrant from another timeline.\u201d The world we know is always disappearing. \u201cExit Party\u201d raises important questions about who people are when not just personal but societal circumstances change. Is everyone capable of murder or heroism? Crime or complicity? Despair or rebellion? As the narrator pointedly asks near the novel\u2019s close, \u201cWho will you be at the end of the world?\u201dEXIT PARTY | By Emily St. John Mandel | Knopf | 301 pp. | $32AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
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