Creation Lake | Rachel Kushner

Sadie Smith is a freelance spy having gotten kicked out of the government's spy program for entrapment. So now she's working as a spy-for-hire in France, infiltrating an eco-commune for a never-named client. But it's not going that great. She's losing her touch and is struggling. Themes of the book center around identity, environmentalism and the intersection with politics, and basic questions of why do we do what we do? What makes us what we are?

The book is written as a noir-ish spy novel (she is a spy, after all). She has all the gadgets hidden away and speaks multiple languages. But what happens when she gets too swept up in the philosophy of the eco-commune's founder and never-seen leader, Bruno?

Nothing is as it seems in this story. Sadie isn't really Sadie (it's a cover identity), she's from a town that doesn't really exist (or so she says), and by the end of the book I can't help but wonder if the commune members haven't seen through her facade from the get-go.

The book is highly readable and does a great job telling a philosophical story in a very approachable genre. Kushner's style injects humor and clever observations where you don't always expect them. The setting of the book, a corporation is trying to secure land to build a mega-basin to hold water, is a real and controversial topic in France. But whose side is Sadie on? Is she observing the commune or is she instigating action that serves her client's unstated goals? Does Sadie, or whoever she is, have her own sense of identity?