‘Exit Party’ Provides Parties but Surprisingly Little Exit

The two dystopian futures for the United States of America that Emily St. John Mandel presents in her new novel Exit Party are somehow the least spectacular parts of her book. In a successful attempt to avoid the overdramatic, St. John Mandel concentrates on developing her characters and following them across the parallel worlds as their achievements and connections spread.

Exit Party
Emily St. John Mandel
Knopf; 320 pages

The main protagonist is Ibari (or just “Ari,” depending on which world) Waker who is a resourceful policeman or criminal — again, depending on the worlds. Around her swirl partners (romantic, professional, personal), systems (social, cultural, economic), and children (other people’s). The one stable point across the two worlds is a 1968 painting — “The Swan Dive,” by Lucas Alkaitis — a reference point borrowed from St John’s previous fiction.

Kareem Fayed’s science lab in one world and his end-of-curfew party in the other are the sites of the cross over: hence “Exit Party.” Both locations feature the Alkaitis painting and Fayed but correlation is not causation and, just as it does not pursue the sociology of the two worlds, the novel is not eager to run towards an explanation of the worlds’ conjunction.

In each reality Waker (and the name is advised), yearns to dive into the water into freedom. However, it seems as though that escape is not really a possibility, either from the loosely totalitarian United State of America (“The opposite of disorder is harmony. Peace is achieved through surveillance. Service is the surveillance department of the State.”) or the bitterly fractured militia of the former United States and post-breakdown Europe.

Characters double and spawn. They suffer differently in each world and, though sharing characteristics, their parallel selves diverge in history, vocation, name. Some characters are separated from their children, others evince no interest in any children they have at hand. The two worlds occasionally seem like the broken half of the other, but we are offered nothing quite so neat.

St. John Mandel provides with satisfying closure, but not really resolution of the problems that she raises. Fans of her Station 11 and other more strident science fiction might have questions about whether this was compelling enough, but I think the tone of the book is one of meditation and comparison worker herself rarely but decisively moves to the point of action and as perhaps for most of us in decision and survival in the face of an obscure present and oblique future is all we can aspire to.