Emily St. John Mandel's 'Exit Party' opens in the wake of a second American Civil War
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What is the premise of Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel Exit Party?
Hey, it's MP's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The world's Emily Saint John Mandel writes about in her books are dark. They are bleak. Her new novel, Exit Party, is no exception. We've got a climate catastrophe, a second US Civil War. Doppelgangers play a role here. But in this interview with MPR Scott Simon, she says something interesting. Especially considering many people turns to fiction as a form of escapism from the horrors and stress of everyday living, Mandel says it's everyday things that help her stay grounded when writing about a bleak and dystopian. World. Getting dinner on the table, picking up your kid from school. She calls these good moments, and it took the pandemic for her to recognize them.
That's coming up.
This week on Up First we talk about the economy. Trucks, trains, and tractors run on diesel, which is now priced at record highs, with less than fifty days until the midterm elections. So the next six weeks are gonna be intense. Let Up First get you through it one morning at a time with three stories you need to know each day. Listen to Up First on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Austin Tice is an American journalist who disappeared over a decade ago while reporting in Syria. And for years, we've been searching for him.
How does Mandel use climate‑science scenarios to imagine a post‑civil‑war America?
This looks like a secret passage. I'm just
pushing a door so you can get in. Listen to Where is Austin Tice from NPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4 on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Emily Saint John Mandel's exit party was Opens with startling words from a world ahead.
In the first spring after the collapse of the United States, the blossoming of the Jacaranda trees felt to Ari like grace. The trees bloomed in the same week that international peacekeeping troops withdrew from Los Angeles, and the convergence of flowers with the absence of foreign soldiers brought a delirious kind of hope. Everyone in the spring of twenty thirty one knew the city was one terrorist attack away from disaster. But that peril made the season more vivid, not less.
Exit Party is the latest novel from the author of Station eleven, Sea of Tranquility and the Glass Hotel. Emily Saint John Mandel joins us from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
Such a pleasure, Scott. It's nice to talk to you again.
Well tell us about this world that you see ahead of us.
I like the deep sigh. That was a pocket. Um You know, lately I've been thinking about this in terms of meteorology. You listen to reports by climate scientists, and they will present you with a range of scenarios.
What are ‘counter‑lives’ and how do they shape the novel’s characters?
This is what the world might look like if We're three degrees above our current temperature. This is what it looks like at four degrees, at five, etcetera. Nobody can tell you which version is true. But all of those scenarios are possible on our current trajectory. So that was how I'm envi I was envisioning this book when I started writing it. I am not implying that there will be a second American Civil War, but That is how the book opens. Actually, well, we open in the aftermath. When the fighting stopped and there is a new world emerging out of the chaos, the curfew is lifted in the city of Los Angeles, Republic of California, and my protagonist is headed out to a party.
We learn within a few sentences, Ari, your protagonist has been in prison for eighteen years and not for shoplifting.
Okay, this is a deep cut way back in twenty ten. I published a novel called The Singer's Gun, and Ari was the villain of that story. She is unambiguously bad news in that book. But she was really interesting to me, and she was a character who I just found myself thinking about intermittently over the years, and thinking What would she be like at the other end of of a very long prison sentence? So that was one of the starting points of the book for me.
Party in the opening chapter. Guests seem to disappear and reappear. as another manifestation of themselves.
How does the party scene act as a portal between parallel universes?
Mm-hmm.
What's going on?
I've been fascinated for years now by the idea of the counter life. It's the life where You went to a different school or married a different person or never started working at NPR or never became a novelist or whatever, whatever that inflection point was.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the premise of Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel Exit Party?
0:02–1:18
2
How does Mandel use climate‑science scenarios to imagine a post‑civil‑war America?
1:18–2:45
3
What are ‘counter‑lives’ and how do they shape the novel’s characters?
2:45–4:15
4
How does the party scene act as a portal between parallel universes?
4:15–5:43
5
Why does the painting Swan Dive become a narrative anchor in the story?
5:43–7:07
6
What is Mandel’s process for keeping a complex, multi‑timeline novel cohesive?
7:07–8:20
7
How does the author find ‘good moments’ amid disaster and pandemic‑era life?
8:20–9:27
8
What is the significance of the novel’s final three sentences?
9:27–10:45
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