Womrath Book Club - November 2024

Hoping to find more incredible reads? Then welcome to the Womrath Book Club, a gathering of bookworms and literature enthusiasts! Each month we will be selecting one of our staff picks for you to read, and us to discuss together. This event will take place on the third Thursday of each month.

For our November 21st session, we will be reading Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner. This intriguing and atmospheric novel is full of sharp wit and complex characterization. It's a book you don't want to miss!

This in-person event will be held at Womrath Bookshop on Pondfield Road in Bronxville, NY, USA. We'll dive into captivating stories, exchange thoughts, and discover new literary gems together. Whether you're a seasoned reader or just starting your reading journey, this club is for you! Let's embark on an exciting literary adventure together at the Womrath Book Club!

This event is free, but registration is required.

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 BOOKER PRIZE*
*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD*
*AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*

From Rachel Kushner, two-time finalist for both the Booker Prize and National Book Award, a “vital” (The Washington Post) and “wickedly entertaining” (The Guardian) novel about a seductive and cunning American woman who infiltrates an anarchist collective in France—a propulsive page-turner filled with dark humor.

A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader.

Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more.

In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists who communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past.

Just as Sadie is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.

Written in short, vaulting sections, Rachel Kushner’s rendition of “noir” is taut and dazzling. Creation Lake is Kushner’s finest achievement yet as a novelist, a work of high art, high comedy, and unforgettable pleasure.

Rachel Kushner is the author of the New York Times bestseller Creation Lake, her latest novel; The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection; and the internationally bestselling novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex from Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Creation Lake was also longlisted for the National Book Award. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books have been translated into twenty-seven languages.

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