Day 1,938, Quasi-Quarantine: "Creation Lake" Suffers From A Flat Protagonist, Sinking Promising Premise

 

“People might claim to believe in this or that, but in the four a.m. version of themselves, most possess no fixed idea on how society should be organized.

…

“What is it people encounter in their stark and solitary four a.m. self? What is inside them?

“Not politics. There are no politics inside of people.

“The truth of the person, under all the layers and guises, the significations of group and type, the quiet truth, underneath the noise of opinions and ‘beliefs,’ is a substance that is pure and stubborn and consistent. It is a hard, white salt.

“This salt is the core. The four a.m. reality of being.”

"Creation Lake" had a few elements that would appear to lend themselves to a tremendous story: an existential hermit living in a cave in France, a globe-trotting mercenary charged with infiltrating protest movements, and the overarching conflict between capitalism and individualism.

“Revolution, which back in 1968 he had believed was possible, he now understood to be foreclosed. The world ruled by capital would not be dismantled. Instead, it had to be left behind.”

However, Rachel Krushner struggled to help these variables coalesce into a coherent story. The first proper dialogue takes place more than 40 pages into the book, and a lack of insight into the inner nature of the protagonist renders most of the tale surface level.

For a few reasons, I was somewhat surprised that this book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize a year ago. I ended up wanting and expecting much more out of the work.

“ … He had the sexual energy of a grandmother with bone density issues.”

Despite the presence of a strong female character, there was a difficult-to-parse scene where she was essentially sexually assaulted in public on a bench near a lake, then quickly succumbed to a random blowjob with this stranger, which included her even swallowing a load.

At times, Sadie demonstrates a lot of agency, while at others she appears to just allow events to unfold without her assent or engagement. "Creation Lake" follows much the same path: It can be difficult to determine when it's trying to make a statement and when it is simply meandering through the European countryside.

“But why would you want to survive mass death? What would be the purpose of life, if life were reduced to a handful of armed pessimists hoarding canned foods and fearing each other? In a bunker, you cannot hear the human community in the earth, the deep cistern of voices, the lake of our creation.”