Exit Party

The novel's two-handed structure pulls off exhilarating feats of narrative derring-do . . . It [. . . ] works beautifully. Mandel is a virtuoso of complication, catching the reader up in suspense, then providing answers slowly, thoroughly, satisfyingly. Exit Party concerns two parallel worlds, but is itself a whole one. Readers will want to linger in it

Times Literary Supplement

She deftly creates emotional resonance through events that feel like a slanted take on our own times . . . Exit Party, like much of her work, makes the case for relishing small moments of joy, frightening as the world is

The Guardian

An elegant, gracefully written crime story with sci-fi shadings

The New Yorker

This kind of emotional depth is rare. Mandel's triumph here is to take genre tropes and create something new from them. Literary science fiction of the highest standard

SFX

A tremendous, riveting, deeply human novel—one of the best I’ve read in years

WIRED

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

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)

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)

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)

Masterful . . . a dizzying story of doubles and parallel universes. Mandel's assured tale offers bracing commentary on the dangers of divisiveness and surveillance, and the propulsive plot is fueled by the unfolding mystery of the initiating party scene. It's a tour de force

Publishers Weekly

As elegant and brilliantly executed as her fans have grown to expect, a book in which every detail matters . . . It is a wonderfully thoughtful book . . . bravo to Emily St. John Mandel, an absolute force in modern fiction

New Scientist

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

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

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

She’s done it again . . . the perfect accumulation of all the novels that came before

New York Magazine