A New York Times Editor’s Choice
"[Emily St. John Mandel's] work has been imbued with a prophetic power. . . . Her books are sublimely readable, their experimental qualities grounded by concrete narrative elements." ―The Globe and Mail
"Masterful. . . . It’s a tour de force." —Publishers' Weekly (starred review)
"[A] glittering puzzle box of a novel … This is [Mandel’s] best novel since Station Eleven (2014), 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 Reviews (starred review)
"Ambitious and captivating. . . . Exit Party feels like the culmination of Mandel's career so far, combining the thrills and mysteries of the author’s early crime novels with the expansive premises and speculative ruminations of later novels like Station Eleven. . . . Exit Party raises important questions about who people are when not just personal but societal circumstances change. As the narrator pointedly asks near the novel’s close, 'Who will you be at the end of the world?'" —The New York Times
"The only world-builder more efficient than Mandel may be God. . . . With the inventiveness of some crafty survivalist in our future, she welds together noir mysteries, classic sci-fi, spy thrillers, and poignant family dramas. . . . It’s 1984 woven through a Möbius strip of her own boundless ingenuity. But for all those dimensional hijinks, what lingers is Mandel’s poignant sympathy with these people lost in their world — or another’s. . . . Exit Party is the kind of novel you’ll be desperate to talk about." —Ron Charles
"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
"An elegant, gracefully written crime story with sci-fi shadings. . . . Mandel’s characters are attuned to beauty, in nature and in fine art, and her sentences share this aesthetic orientation. . . . I gulped the book down." —Katy Waldman, The New Yorker
"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
"This urgent, unsettling novel is an addictive puzzle that maps the twinship of authoritarianism and chaos." —People
"Mandel 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." —Guardian
"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
"Beautifully written . . . a sweeping saga . . . One of the joys of her novels is that though you frequently have no idea where the story is travelling, you have confidence as a reader that it is moving towards a clear resolution. It is not that all loose ends are neatly tied but you know there is a destination . . . St. John Mandel is a beautiful writer. Reading her work is like slipping into a warm pool . . . there are times when she calls to mind Paul Auster and his characters dancing to the music of chance." —Financial Times
"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
"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
"Intricately built, dazzlingly expansive . . . . Exit Party is a hopeful novel that understands the vast, oceanic nature of possibility. In the face of nearly cataclysmic events, the primary characters endure to varying degrees. Art matters. Existence remains mysterious—unsolvable as we know it to be. Will we continue to make meaning if our country faces one of the two potential futures Mandel sets out? Her answer is yes." —Alta
"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
"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
"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)
"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)
"With Exit Party, Mandel has once again delivered the kind of book that will fold itself around you like a blanket, offering comfort, warmth and diverting strangeness through its unsettling vision of the world. . . . Her resonant emotional clarity makes Exit Party a must read, whether it’s your first Mandel novel or just your latest visit to one of her worlds." —BookPage (starred review)
"Destabilizing, extraordinary, and blood-boiling. . . . Mandel weds a sharp, ambivalent self-accounting—the type of study that tends to wear the label ‘autofiction’—to a speculative epic." —The New Yorker on Sea of Tranquility
"Simply stunning, a boldly experimental work which hooks the reader from its first pages, wending to a powerfully emotional conclusion. . . . The Glass Hotel becomes stronger, and more powerful, with every page. . . . a compulsive read." —Toronto Star on The Glass Hotel
"Mandel grounds her rich metaphysical speculation in small, beautifully observed human moments. By turns playful, tragic, and tender, this should not be missed." —Publishers Weekly on Sea of Tranquility (starred review)
"In luminous prose, Mandel shows how easy it is to become caught in a web of unintended consequences and how disastrous it can be when such fragile bonds shatter under pressure. A strange, subtle, and haunting novel." —Kirkus Reviews on The Glass Hotel (starred review)
"Gracefully written and suspenseful. . . . Its evocation of the collapse of our civilization is powerful." —The National Post on Station Eleven
