What do you think?
Rate this book
Exit Party
The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman—a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State—searches for answers.
Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.
As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.
Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.
As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 15, 2026
About the author
Emily St. John Mandel
18 books30.3k followersEmily St. John Mandel was born and raised on the west coast of British Columbia, Canada. She studied contemporary dance at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre and lived briefly in Montreal before relocating to New York.
She is the author of five novels, including The Glass Hotel (spring 2020) and Station Eleven (2014.) Station Eleven was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the Morning News Tournament of Books, and has been translated into 34 languages. She lives in NYC with her husband and daughter.
She is the author of five novels, including The Glass Hotel (spring 2020) and Station Eleven (2014.) Station Eleven was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the Morning News Tournament of Books, and has been translated into 34 languages. She lives in NYC with her husband and daughter.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,845 reviews
Read
December 17, 2025I have read the new Emily St. John Mandel!
I'll write a full review closer to publication date in September, but for now I will strongly urge you to read her 2nd novel The Singer's Gun before you read this one!!!!
It's not a requirement to enjoy/understand this book. However, Exit Party will spoil The Singer's Gun for you, so if you care about not being spoiled (which you should because TSG is great and worth reading), then go read it first.
Plus, it makes reading her later books more fun because you can make all the connections between the characters from previous ones. Also I guess while we're at it, you should probably read The Glass Hotel first too, though that one isn't as strongly connected.
What the heck, just read all 6 of her backlist anyway because they are great and then you will be ready for EP in September!!!
I'll write a full review closer to publication date in September, but for now I will strongly urge you to read her 2nd novel The Singer's Gun before you read this one!!!!
It's not a requirement to enjoy/understand this book. However, Exit Party will spoil The Singer's Gun for you, so if you care about not being spoiled (which you should because TSG is great and worth reading), then go read it first.
Plus, it makes reading her later books more fun because you can make all the connections between the characters from previous ones. Also I guess while we're at it, you should probably read The Glass Hotel first too, though that one isn't as strongly connected.
What the heck, just read all 6 of her backlist anyway because they are great and then you will be ready for EP in September!!!
September 20, 2026
“I think if you live long enough,” Nico said, “you become a migrant from another timeline. There’s the world you learn to navigate as you enter adulthood, and then that world slips away from you by degrees, and after a while there’s nothing left of it, but you’re still here. That’s what I mean.”
One of my favourite things about Mandel's books at this point is seeing how they are connected through small subtleties— a shared multiverse of recurring characters, overlapping events, and literary Easter eggs. Exit Party stands on its own, but finding the synchronicity in the Mandelverse is also a lot of fun.
In this story, Mandel connects a portrait painted in a 1960s NYC apartment to a century later when a controversial dome has been constructed over Paris, weaving a hundred years and multiple timelines in between. The titular party is a focal point, an event at which Ari witnesses a number of inexplicable occurrences, from doubles of her friends to the host disappearing into thin air.
We then follow Ari (and other characters) across the decades as she tries to carve a meaningful life for herself in a world that has descended into chaos. The USA has collapsed, city states have formed across the former country, and gangs wreak havoc. Alongside this, she encounters people she knows but does not know. That is, she knew a version of them but not this one.
When we get to experience the other universe that has become entangled with this one, Mandel seizes the opportunity to compare two very different societies, but also highlight the structural similarities— one is chaos, anarchy and freedom, the other order and strict control. Despite seeming polar opposites, there are many parallels between these two extremes. Perhaps obviously, while being entirely controlled is undesirable, freedom is its own kind of disaster.
As with her previous novels, there is something haunting, quiet, and melancholy about Exit Party. I felt a strange sadness throughout that I can't quite define. In the Mandelverse, even in societies governed by vigilantes and violence, it feels like the world will end with a whimper and not a bang.
March 15, 2026
this is my new favorite book and i haven't even read it yet.
update: scratch that. it's my biggest tragedy of the year.
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
update: scratch that. it's my biggest tragedy of the year.
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
September 14, 2026
Run, don’t walk, to buy this book!
My expectations going into this were sky-high, and Emily St. John Mandel did not disappoint.
Exit Party begins with a party in Los Angeles, set in the year 2031. To celebrate the curfew being lifted, Kareem throws a party. Except some strange things occur at this party.
Emily St. John Mandel never wastes a word. I find myself trying to pay attention to even the smallest details, because they might be important as the story progresses or even in different books.
Without revealing any spoilers, the author displays a sense of expert control within her writing, not devolving into an abyss of technical details, and she understands how to evoke feelings in the reader.
I really enjoyed reading this, and I immediately searched for The Singer’s Gun which provides additional details about one of the secondary characters.
“If you don’t have a witness, your past starts to feel fictional.” – Exit Party, page 53
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $29.64 on Amazon
Audiobook – Audible – 1 Credit (Audible Premium Plus Annual – 24 Credits Membership Plan $229.50 or roughly $9.56 per credit)
Connect With Me!
Blog Threads BookTube Facebook Insta My Bookstore at Pango
My expectations going into this were sky-high, and Emily St. John Mandel did not disappoint.
Exit Party begins with a party in Los Angeles, set in the year 2031. To celebrate the curfew being lifted, Kareem throws a party. Except some strange things occur at this party.
Emily St. John Mandel never wastes a word. I find myself trying to pay attention to even the smallest details, because they might be important as the story progresses or even in different books.
Without revealing any spoilers, the author displays a sense of expert control within her writing, not devolving into an abyss of technical details, and she understands how to evoke feelings in the reader.
I really enjoyed reading this, and I immediately searched for The Singer’s Gun which provides additional details about one of the secondary characters.
“If you don’t have a witness, your past starts to feel fictional.” – Exit Party, page 53
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $29.64 on Amazon
Audiobook – Audible – 1 Credit (Audible Premium Plus Annual – 24 Credits Membership Plan $229.50 or roughly $9.56 per credit)
Connect With Me!
Blog Threads BookTube Facebook Insta My Bookstore at Pango
Read
September 18, 20261. in 2014, Emily St. John Mandel wrote STATION ELEVEN, about a world suddenly plunged into a global pandemic, years before Covid came along.
2. In 2026, Emily St. John Mandel released EXIT PARTY, a novel where the main character listens repeatedly to Bach's cello suites, on September 15th, the day after Maggie Stiefvater's beleaguered cello instructor says to her "here's the Bach," as he finally gives in and assigns her Bach's first cello suite.
3. COINCIDENCE? Is this useful? Is this entertaining? Am I dreaming?
4. EXIT PARTY is, like St. John Mandel's previous work, a literary speculative piece, this time about quantum doubling, faint coincidences, vague premonitions, Los Angeles parties, Paris weather domes, and felons who listen to Bach's cello suites under stress.
Let these four bullet points serve as my review. I would write more, but I have to practice. This suite is not the easiest thing in the world.
2. In 2026, Emily St. John Mandel released EXIT PARTY, a novel where the main character listens repeatedly to Bach's cello suites, on September 15th, the day after Maggie Stiefvater's beleaguered cello instructor says to her "here's the Bach," as he finally gives in and assigns her Bach's first cello suite.
3. COINCIDENCE? Is this useful? Is this entertaining? Am I dreaming?
4. EXIT PARTY is, like St. John Mandel's previous work, a literary speculative piece, this time about quantum doubling, faint coincidences, vague premonitions, Los Angeles parties, Paris weather domes, and felons who listen to Bach's cello suites under stress.
Let these four bullet points serve as my review. I would write more, but I have to practice. This suite is not the easiest thing in the world.
Read
September 4, 2026Weird looking book here i come
September 15, 2026
In this strand of the multiverse, the I that is me is not entirely sure what happens in Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel, Exit Party.
I can only hope this review is smarter in a different dimension.
But at least I’m being honest. Anybody who promises you definitive clarity on this mind-bending story should be regarded with the suspicion reserved for Instagram health experts.
Mandel’s work is where you go when you’ve wandered through the magic wardrobe and your green portal gun is out of fluid. Across six — now seven — novels twisting in the space-time continuum, she’s explored our most poignant struggles for connection in a world constantly shattering beneath us.
In early 2020 when the Covid pandemic struck, bookstores stocked with copies of Mandel’s flu dystopia, Station Eleven, were luckier than neighbors hoarding toilet paper.
How close are we now to the national hellscape that greets us in these opening pages of Exit Party? The year is 2031, when I thought all we had to worry about was Social Security running out of money, but Mandel calls it “the first spring after the collapse of the United States.” She doesn’t spill much ink on that dissolution, perhaps because we’ve been mulling over the possibility for the past decade, or simply because she’s always more interested in the personal response to disaster than the mechanics. In any case, it’s enough to know that the Union disbanded after a coup d’état, states seceded, “either alone or in alliances,” and a new civil war ravaged the land.
But now the international peacekeeping troops have withdrawn from Los Angeles, the city’s curfew has finally been lifted, and it’s time to party. Sure, there are still random terrorist bombings here and there, but that’s no reason to stay cooped up forever.
A young man named Kareem invites everybody he knows to his apartment to celebrate, and Mandel instantly captures how adept we are at translating calamity into tedium.
“So, how’s the collapse of the country going for you?” one guest asks.
“Oh, you know, could’ve been worse.”
Kareem is a gracious host. “His apartment was both cramped and glamorous,” Mandel writes. “He’d gone to some effort. There were flowers everywhere.”
But then there’s something amiss — just odd, and only odd if you’re....
You can read the rest of this review for free on Substack:
https://roncharles.substack.com/p/it-...
I can only hope this review is smarter in a different dimension.
But at least I’m being honest. Anybody who promises you definitive clarity on this mind-bending story should be regarded with the suspicion reserved for Instagram health experts.
Mandel’s work is where you go when you’ve wandered through the magic wardrobe and your green portal gun is out of fluid. Across six — now seven — novels twisting in the space-time continuum, she’s explored our most poignant struggles for connection in a world constantly shattering beneath us.
In early 2020 when the Covid pandemic struck, bookstores stocked with copies of Mandel’s flu dystopia, Station Eleven, were luckier than neighbors hoarding toilet paper.
How close are we now to the national hellscape that greets us in these opening pages of Exit Party? The year is 2031, when I thought all we had to worry about was Social Security running out of money, but Mandel calls it “the first spring after the collapse of the United States.” She doesn’t spill much ink on that dissolution, perhaps because we’ve been mulling over the possibility for the past decade, or simply because she’s always more interested in the personal response to disaster than the mechanics. In any case, it’s enough to know that the Union disbanded after a coup d’état, states seceded, “either alone or in alliances,” and a new civil war ravaged the land.
But now the international peacekeeping troops have withdrawn from Los Angeles, the city’s curfew has finally been lifted, and it’s time to party. Sure, there are still random terrorist bombings here and there, but that’s no reason to stay cooped up forever.
A young man named Kareem invites everybody he knows to his apartment to celebrate, and Mandel instantly captures how adept we are at translating calamity into tedium.
“So, how’s the collapse of the country going for you?” one guest asks.
“Oh, you know, could’ve been worse.”
Kareem is a gracious host. “His apartment was both cramped and glamorous,” Mandel writes. “He’d gone to some effort. There were flowers everywhere.”
But then there’s something amiss — just odd, and only odd if you’re....
You can read the rest of this review for free on Substack:
https://roncharles.substack.com/p/it-...
August 31, 2026
I think this is the author’s best book since Station Eleven, and I guess this is the time to admit that as much as I loved that book, my other encounters with Emily St. John Mandel’s writing have been less than stellar. I liked
The Glass Hotel
but can hardly remember it; my only remaining impression of
Sea of Tranquility
is that I found the stuff about the writer’s family annoying; and I was not impressed by The Lola Quartet. (For this reason, I didn’t read
The Singer’s Gun
before starting Exit Party, although I knew the characters were connected. Maybe I’d have got something extra out of Exit Party if I had, but I can confirm that knowledge of the earlier book definitely isn’t necessary to enjoy this one.)
Time will tell whether Exit Party will stick more firmly in my mind or not, but I found the beginning of this novel instantly engaging with its irresistible opening scene. In a near-future, post-civil-war, fractured USA, ex-con Ari is attending a party with her skittish roommate Gloria. But strange things happen at this party. To be more specific, doubles of some guests appear at the party; meanwhile, the host vanishes completely. I was hooked. From there it becomes a globetrotting story that spans several countries and two realities, sticking most closely to two versions of Ari, aka Ibari Walker, who, in another version of her life, is a detective rather than a criminal.
One of the greatest strengths of Mandel’s writing has always been her ability to bring characters and worlds to life with seemingly little effort. I found the futures of Exit Party convincing, but I particularly loved all the smaller and more recognisable human details embedded within them, the habits and complex histories between characters that make these parallel lives feel like actual lives lived, rather than simply routes through the plot. In the last couple of months I’ve read a handful of really wonderful novels and a bunch of disappointing ones, but this might have been the most purely pleasurable reading experience – the sort of book where the pages seemed almost to turn themselves.
I received an advance review copy of Exit Party from the publisher through Edelweiss.
Time will tell whether Exit Party will stick more firmly in my mind or not, but I found the beginning of this novel instantly engaging with its irresistible opening scene. In a near-future, post-civil-war, fractured USA, ex-con Ari is attending a party with her skittish roommate Gloria. But strange things happen at this party. To be more specific, doubles of some guests appear at the party; meanwhile, the host vanishes completely. I was hooked. From there it becomes a globetrotting story that spans several countries and two realities, sticking most closely to two versions of Ari, aka Ibari Walker, who, in another version of her life, is a detective rather than a criminal.
One of the greatest strengths of Mandel’s writing has always been her ability to bring characters and worlds to life with seemingly little effort. I found the futures of Exit Party convincing, but I particularly loved all the smaller and more recognisable human details embedded within them, the habits and complex histories between characters that make these parallel lives feel like actual lives lived, rather than simply routes through the plot. In the last couple of months I’ve read a handful of really wonderful novels and a bunch of disappointing ones, but this might have been the most purely pleasurable reading experience – the sort of book where the pages seemed almost to turn themselves.
I received an advance review copy of Exit Party from the publisher through Edelweiss.
September 2, 2026
🚨🚨controversial take incoming 🚨🚨 this is my least favorite em St. John mandel I’ve read, and I REALLY hate to say that.
If you’ve talked to me at all in the last like ~4 years or so you’d probs know that “Sea of Tranquility” is, to me, a perfect book, and I also adore “the glass hotel” and “station eleven,” the other two books of hers I read. I was totally expecting this one to also be an easy homerun for me, but I am forced to turn Judas. 💔
I think what I love so much about the three Mandel novels I’ve read is how effortlessly she weaves together far-flung characters, plots, timelines, and realities into something profoundly human and beautiful and transient and moving. But all these elements really don’t come together in the same way in “exit party,” and I’m not really sure why.
I think potentially what it could be is a general lack of feeling and care between characters, and internally in the heads of the narrators. The first half of the book was a slog for me (relatively—even if I didn’t like this, I still couldn’t put it down for very long without wanting to pick it back up again), mostly because I didn’t care about Ari at all, or what happened to her. I think the entire Paris section doesn’t really do enough to justify it.
Another problem I had was a lot of this book, instead of making us wonder how these distant characters are connected as Mandel usually does, spends the entire time going over how characters we’ve already known are connected, connect. There was no tension, really, as a result, and things felt repetitive.
The second half of the book really picks up, and I wish it had been the whole of the novel. It’s where the usual Mandel-things occur: found family, an uncaring person making a selfless act to save another. But because it was only half the book, the emotional impact doesn’t hit as hard.
Anyways long review to say what I expected to be a 5 star is tragically a 3!
If you’ve talked to me at all in the last like ~4 years or so you’d probs know that “Sea of Tranquility” is, to me, a perfect book, and I also adore “the glass hotel” and “station eleven,” the other two books of hers I read. I was totally expecting this one to also be an easy homerun for me, but I am forced to turn Judas. 💔
I think what I love so much about the three Mandel novels I’ve read is how effortlessly she weaves together far-flung characters, plots, timelines, and realities into something profoundly human and beautiful and transient and moving. But all these elements really don’t come together in the same way in “exit party,” and I’m not really sure why.
I think potentially what it could be is a general lack of feeling and care between characters, and internally in the heads of the narrators. The first half of the book was a slog for me (relatively—even if I didn’t like this, I still couldn’t put it down for very long without wanting to pick it back up again), mostly because I didn’t care about Ari at all, or what happened to her. I think the entire Paris section doesn’t really do enough to justify it.
Another problem I had was a lot of this book, instead of making us wonder how these distant characters are connected as Mandel usually does, spends the entire time going over how characters we’ve already known are connected, connect. There was no tension, really, as a result, and things felt repetitive.
The second half of the book really picks up, and I wish it had been the whole of the novel. It’s where the usual Mandel-things occur: found family, an uncaring person making a selfless act to save another. But because it was only half the book, the emotional impact doesn’t hit as hard.
Anyways long review to say what I expected to be a 5 star is tragically a 3!
September 30, 2025
INJECT THIS INTO MY VEINS NOW
EDIT: It’s injected, and it’s beautiful. It’s hard, maybe impossible, for me to describe exactly why ESJM’s writing resonates so deeply. The nearest I can get is that it’s the closest thing to describing my state of being: the beauty in melancholy, the coincidence of nostalgia, the restlessly hopeful coming together of words, art, and longing sadness.
I am sure there is a word for it, but I cannot find it. I am sure Emily St. John Mandel could.
Exit Party is a love letter and an expansion of the Mandelverse. Her novels continue to be further interwoven and prior characters and locales re-explored and re-contextualized (and often redeemed, even subtly). There are other worlds than these and they are full of wonder in spite of themselves - from a vast moon colony to a quiet studio, where an artist paints an image of a diver that will eventually determine the course of multiple lives.
EDIT: It’s injected, and it’s beautiful. It’s hard, maybe impossible, for me to describe exactly why ESJM’s writing resonates so deeply. The nearest I can get is that it’s the closest thing to describing my state of being: the beauty in melancholy, the coincidence of nostalgia, the restlessly hopeful coming together of words, art, and longing sadness.
I am sure there is a word for it, but I cannot find it. I am sure Emily St. John Mandel could.
Exit Party is a love letter and an expansion of the Mandelverse. Her novels continue to be further interwoven and prior characters and locales re-explored and re-contextualized (and often redeemed, even subtly). There are other worlds than these and they are full of wonder in spite of themselves - from a vast moon colony to a quiet studio, where an artist paints an image of a diver that will eventually determine the course of multiple lives.
September 19, 2026
4! So much to unpack here, RTF!
Los Ángeles, 2031. United States has collapsed. California is its own republic. 48 year old, Ari has just been released from prison after an attempted murder. She goes to a party where the host mysteriously disappears and people start encountering doubles of themselves. The party-turned-mystery becomes the center of two different realities which begin to overlap. In one, we have the fallen America and in the other-an America that survives but becomes authoritarian.
Emily St. John Mandel continues to use the Swan Dive phenomena that connects this novel to The Glass Hotel
Another one of my most anticipated book of 2026 & I really enjoyed it!
Los Ángeles, 2031. United States has collapsed. California is its own republic. 48 year old, Ari has just been released from prison after an attempted murder. She goes to a party where the host mysteriously disappears and people start encountering doubles of themselves. The party-turned-mystery becomes the center of two different realities which begin to overlap. In one, we have the fallen America and in the other-an America that survives but becomes authoritarian.
Emily St. John Mandel continues to use the Swan Dive phenomena that connects this novel to The Glass Hotel
Another one of my most anticipated book of 2026 & I really enjoyed it!
September 29, 2026
[5]
Yes, I read this twice in a row!
Mandel flirts with nihilism, dances with doom, walks through collapse, spies on surveillance —yet ultimately delivers an act of kindness, a shred of hope, and the stability of art and humanity in a fractured multiverse. Similar themes to Station Eleven, but within a parallel universe (Side A—civil wars and chaos, and Side B-- the closed fist of government surveillance and control). There’s a rip in the fabric of time and space, and both worlds are hellscapes, and a pisser for the reader to navigate, especially on first read. This is one of those rare books I read twice in a row, to try and gain more access and because the ending demanded that I do that.
And during the second read, I observed the molecules moving between A and B that I had not observed first time around. Flickering lights, the chill of a room, the air thinning, the skipping needle on a record player, a sudden claustrophobia in an open space and other details highlight the friction between Side A and B that prickled the back of my neck—that place back there reserved for only the most powerful reads of my life.
The dialogue between her novels are amplified this second pass, and the multiverse—or Mandel-verse— is continually fascinating. Mandel makes physics emotional, rather than relying heavily on technology and sci-fi deep dives. Complicity is more important than technology. Loneliness and disorientation are a major focus, not data and tech parameters. Looking for a lost loved one, how to achieve personal agency, and trying to raise a family in a fractured, paranoid world are in the foreground. Mandel knows how to make that setting atmospheric and fulfilling for the reader.
I can count on one hand how many books I’ve read twice, but Exit Party is worth multiple reads. If I had rated it after my first reading, I would have given four stars. The second reading amplified the story for me and easily boosted it to five. Mandel’s world building and the masterful consciousness between the parallel timelines don’t just hover—they land. Reading it the second time removed the tension of “what will happen next,” and I was able to delve into the timeline collisions of 2031 and then thirty years later and explore how they encountered and confronted each other.
Lots of Easter eggs connecting this book to earlier works of Mandel’s. The crossovers are brilliant—Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven share a Mandelverse I recognized early on. In partcular, there’s a painting, Swan Dive, that becomes a central piece of all three novels. The meaning evolves in each book. It’s uncanny, even dark, but it also shows us that art is a stable feature of all time, no matter what has happened to the world at large.
The narrative aptly creates an existential anxiety which was brilliantly evoked by the author. It shows how identity is fragile, how we can become a different version of ourselves, depending on our external environment. Have you ever wondered how or if a single choice can change our entire destiny? It isn’t a supreme cosmic wave that changes who we are, but the subtle shift of an ordinary moment.
Yes, I read this twice in a row!
Mandel flirts with nihilism, dances with doom, walks through collapse, spies on surveillance —yet ultimately delivers an act of kindness, a shred of hope, and the stability of art and humanity in a fractured multiverse. Similar themes to Station Eleven, but within a parallel universe (Side A—civil wars and chaos, and Side B-- the closed fist of government surveillance and control). There’s a rip in the fabric of time and space, and both worlds are hellscapes, and a pisser for the reader to navigate, especially on first read. This is one of those rare books I read twice in a row, to try and gain more access and because the ending demanded that I do that.
And during the second read, I observed the molecules moving between A and B that I had not observed first time around. Flickering lights, the chill of a room, the air thinning, the skipping needle on a record player, a sudden claustrophobia in an open space and other details highlight the friction between Side A and B that prickled the back of my neck—that place back there reserved for only the most powerful reads of my life.
The dialogue between her novels are amplified this second pass, and the multiverse—or Mandel-verse— is continually fascinating. Mandel makes physics emotional, rather than relying heavily on technology and sci-fi deep dives. Complicity is more important than technology. Loneliness and disorientation are a major focus, not data and tech parameters. Looking for a lost loved one, how to achieve personal agency, and trying to raise a family in a fractured, paranoid world are in the foreground. Mandel knows how to make that setting atmospheric and fulfilling for the reader.
I can count on one hand how many books I’ve read twice, but Exit Party is worth multiple reads. If I had rated it after my first reading, I would have given four stars. The second reading amplified the story for me and easily boosted it to five. Mandel’s world building and the masterful consciousness between the parallel timelines don’t just hover—they land. Reading it the second time removed the tension of “what will happen next,” and I was able to delve into the timeline collisions of 2031 and then thirty years later and explore how they encountered and confronted each other.
Lots of Easter eggs connecting this book to earlier works of Mandel’s. The crossovers are brilliant—Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven share a Mandelverse I recognized early on. In partcular, there’s a painting, Swan Dive, that becomes a central piece of all three novels. The meaning evolves in each book. It’s uncanny, even dark, but it also shows us that art is a stable feature of all time, no matter what has happened to the world at large.
The narrative aptly creates an existential anxiety which was brilliantly evoked by the author. It shows how identity is fragile, how we can become a different version of ourselves, depending on our external environment. Have you ever wondered how or if a single choice can change our entire destiny? It isn’t a supreme cosmic wave that changes who we are, but the subtle shift of an ordinary moment.
July 4, 2026
So this is unlike anything that I’ve ever read, but it’s my first reading of this author’s who has bestsellers as Station ll, The Glass Hotel, and others.
This story starts off at a party in 2031 to celebrate the departure of troops from Los Angeles and the lift of the city-wide curfew.
This was a post collapse of America that had happened.
The party is at a man named Kareem’s apartment and something ends up being VERY wrong. As Kareem is greeting friends and acquaintances, he starts seeing doppelgängers of many of them, but they are dressed differently and have different names from each other. He is so distressed that he leaves his own party.
We are then taken into two near future worlds running parallel to each other.. with the same characters living different lives in each world.
We are in the USA, Greece and Paris(which is under a dome)
Surveillance is everywhere.
It was very good but more sci-fi than I would ever pick up.
I believe anyone who likes this genre will really love this one!
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the free ebook in exchange for my honest review.
This story starts off at a party in 2031 to celebrate the departure of troops from Los Angeles and the lift of the city-wide curfew.
This was a post collapse of America that had happened.
The party is at a man named Kareem’s apartment and something ends up being VERY wrong. As Kareem is greeting friends and acquaintances, he starts seeing doppelgängers of many of them, but they are dressed differently and have different names from each other. He is so distressed that he leaves his own party.
We are then taken into two near future worlds running parallel to each other.. with the same characters living different lives in each world.
We are in the USA, Greece and Paris(which is under a dome)
Surveillance is everywhere.
It was very good but more sci-fi than I would ever pick up.
I believe anyone who likes this genre will really love this one!
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the free ebook in exchange for my honest review.
November 5, 2025
A humane novel on who we could be in different circumstances and how art and human connection seem a red thread even when order and chaos and freedom and surveillance are varied
Who will you be at the end of the world?
I try to be a good parent.
I try to be a good friend.
Full review to follow but this novel of parallel worlds and two widely different views on the US, and their implications on the people is sometimes too convenient but overall compelling due to it’s emotional core and the greys the main characters inhibit.
Who will you be at the end of the world?
I try to be a good parent.
I try to be a good friend.
Full review to follow but this novel of parallel worlds and two widely different views on the US, and their implications on the people is sometimes too convenient but overall compelling due to it’s emotional core and the greys the main characters inhibit.
October 5, 2026
I am a huge fan of Emily St. John Mandel and have read all but two of her novels. This one is right up there with my favorite, Sea of Tranquility. I loved the format/presentation of the novel as Side A and Side B. Each side explores the mirror happenings in mirror realities of two different Earths. The realities of each Earth are not quite as dystopian considering the world we are living in. I loved an early observation on living during a dramatic moment in history on page 11. I don’t want to spoil a reader’s experience, so I won’t quote it exactly.
Reading the novel can be a bit surreal and this quote captures that feeling. “If you don’t have a witness, your past starts to feel fictional.” Like many novels, Exit Party explores stories-the stories we are told by those in power, our families, and the stories we tell ourselves to get through the day. It also explores what is chosen to be seen and unseen, and once something is seen, it cannot be unseen. I loved the role and symbolic nature of the painting Swan Dive in the novel. The artist is a character from a former book. She also quotes a different novel from earlier in her catalogue. I love how all of her novels exist in the same “universe”.
Some many words are woven throughout the novel that explore the concepts of time, government, and family. Words like ghost, transport, state, and freedom have different meanings depending upon the context and situation. The phrase True Diligence is highlighted in both worlds. What would you do if your world slipped away and you found yourself in another? You don’t need to know much about physics to understand and enjoy the novel. The quantum entanglement is explained clearly in the novel. Exit Party is quite a fascinating and captivating doppelganger story. I couldn’t put it down. When I turned the last page, I was left in awe. I felt called to go back to the beginning and experience it all over again.
Reading the novel can be a bit surreal and this quote captures that feeling. “If you don’t have a witness, your past starts to feel fictional.” Like many novels, Exit Party explores stories-the stories we are told by those in power, our families, and the stories we tell ourselves to get through the day. It also explores what is chosen to be seen and unseen, and once something is seen, it cannot be unseen. I loved the role and symbolic nature of the painting Swan Dive in the novel. The artist is a character from a former book. She also quotes a different novel from earlier in her catalogue. I love how all of her novels exist in the same “universe”.
Some many words are woven throughout the novel that explore the concepts of time, government, and family. Words like ghost, transport, state, and freedom have different meanings depending upon the context and situation. The phrase True Diligence is highlighted in both worlds. What would you do if your world slipped away and you found yourself in another? You don’t need to know much about physics to understand and enjoy the novel. The quantum entanglement is explained clearly in the novel. Exit Party is quite a fascinating and captivating doppelganger story. I couldn’t put it down. When I turned the last page, I was left in awe. I felt called to go back to the beginning and experience it all over again.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
It was a fascinating alternate reality to consider, but as I read through the three previous transcripts, I sensed an increasing distance and disinterest on the part of the interviewers. The man's stories were consistent from interview to interview, but the problem was that there was no way at all to verify anything he said. Still, his story lined up with Nico's husband's in a way that couldn't be ignored. This Kareem had thrown a party, and at a certain point in the evening, doubles of two of his friends had appeared.
I came late to the brilliant world of Emily St John Mandel in 2020 when I read her cult-favourite Arthur C Clarke winning fourth novel “Station Eleven” (dealing with the aftermath of a deadly swine flu pandemic and beginning with an actor dying from a heart attack in a production of King Lear) back to back with her then newly published fifth novel “The Glass Hotel”. Read together (and I think it is by far the best way to read them) the novels were simply brilliantly. “The Glass Hotel” in particular, alongside its exploration of capitalism and white collar crime with its pseudo-Madoff plot, is really an exploration of ideas such as shadow worlds, ghost worlds, lost worlds, counter-factual narratives, doubleness, parallel realities: and what really makes the books work so well together is that “The Glass Hotel” is effectively a parallel universe mentioned in the “Station Eleven” quote where the devastating pandemic does not happen, but the global financial crisis does, and with many other links between the novels which I have bought out in my extensive Goodreads review of both. Her sixth novel “Sea of Tranquility” (2022) takes place in the Glass Hotel universe and introduced both meta-fictionality/self-referentiality (with a character almost an author stand-in) and the ideas of time travel and of reality versus simulation.
I say world of Emily St John Mandel but really it would be more appropriate to say the Mandelverse – the by way well known way in which characters reappear across her books – including from her first three novels “Last Night In Montreal”, “The Singers Gun” and “The Lola Quartet” which were more the literary noir-thriller/detective novels than her more conceptual second three novels.
And this her seventh novel – due out in September 2026 and which I would love to see gain some Booker recognition, returns to many of the same ideas, very much exploring the idea of counterlives and even more explicitly parallel worlds (here both taking place within two halves of the same novel rather than between two novels).
It is also very much part of that Mandelverse – Ari Walker (Anton’s crime dealing cousin from “The Singers Gun” is the novel’s opening and key character) and the paintings of Lucas Alkaitis from “Glass Hotel” (one of which is directly from that novel, another of which takes its title from a chapter heading there – “Swan Dive”) are a key to the mystery at this novel – the second in particular forming a literal portal between two worlds. A minor character works on the moon-based Colony from “Sea of Tranquillity”. There are also some agent passphrases in the novel too that feel like they are taken from another Mandel novel – but I was unable to trace them.
The novel is I think even more explicitly political than her other novels – for me a key phrase in the novel is “countries don’t last for ever” and Mandel uses this work I think to point at the current clear fragility of liberal democracy in the USA and even the fragility of the USA itself. Set in a near future 2031, it sets out two counter-states for the future of America, both of them though dystopian: one an America torn apart into warring territories and city-states (Mandel whose writing of course anticipated pandemics first came across the idea of America and her native Canada splitting into opposed groupings of contiguous and similarly inclined states with the varied responses to COVID); the second an America still united but only via an all-pervasive totalitarian surveillance state.
The novel is written in two parts – Side A and Side B which take place in these two different worlds.
It opens (Side A) in the warring America – and with a (titular) party taking place to celebrate the lifting of a curfew in LA following a coup and civil war which has ripped the country asunder. Note that the idea of celebration (the party) and the importance of art (here in the form of the paintings) in the face of breakdown echoes of course the idea of the King Lear performances in “Station Eleven” and is one I think important to the author.
The party is attended by Ari – who having served a 20 year prison sentence for the hit on her cousin Anton (which forms the culmination of “The Singers Gun”) has been released and goes to live with Gloria – her flatmate, a refugee from US militia wars, distinguished by a scar (whose provenance emerges over time) – and is hosted by Gloria’s friend Kareem. At the party Gloria spots a woman who seems to change appearance and identity almost instantaneously and who seems to think she knows Ari (but by her legal and unused name Ibari) – and Kareem (who Gloria reveals is the father of her unborn child) disappears although not before Gloria decides to take his Alkatis painting “Swan Dive”. And post party further complications ensue – Ari meets someone who is apparently identical to Gloria (other than the scar) but goes by the name Nico (and who also appeared at the party) and who in turn thinks Ari is near identical to someone she knows called Ibari – and we are in a whole world of both doubling and disappearance and Ari finds herself both detective and drawn back to her familiar world of crime – this time as a gun-runner.
A second first party section takes us to Paris and the now elderly, extremely rich and recently widowed Ari being visited by Sebastian pretending to be an art student but who she realises is the son of Gloria – albeit largely raised by Nico – and who she also realises intends to steal “Swan Dive” which she bought from Gloria to add to her art collection. And from there we get her back story since fleeing America and her series of marriages, involvement in high end crime and also near death experience in a protest against the exclusionary domes being put up in Paris – but also in a short series of one sided conversations (at the time of the explosion) Nico sharing with her something of what lead to Nico’s sudden appearance at the party – pulled away from a different parallel world – before returning to her interaction with Sebastian.
And then we move in Side B to that different world – Marlow (a name we know from side A as one of the children Nico left behind when she came to this world) is called by her estranged brother to say that her father Kareem is dying. Her father’s best friend – Ibari – Detective Walker who now in her seventies has worked for years for Service the all pervasive state entity which has preserved America (admittedly now with exit as well as entry forbidden) while other states collapse, comes to the beside and Marlow’s lunar-worker brother Samir is thrown by the appearance of an undocumented man living who not just shares his father’s appearance but his name.
And from there we get both the story of the state-defying and misfiring experiment what lead to the opening party and its series of doubles and its disappearance (and the reverse disappearances and the double in Side B) and how the aftermath and repercussions played out over decades in the Side B world.
There were some nice touches which built on and linked the core ideas of the novel – for example: the idea of death as being like a transport between worlds (with again the Swan Dive painting seemingly explicitly facilitating both forms of transportation); a reference to ageing as being similarly like migrating between different timelines and between the disorientation and world-navigation-difficulties that the characters who find themselves moving between the two USAs experience “There's the world you learn to navigate as you enter adulthood, and then that world slips away from you by degrees, and after a while there's nothing left of it, but you're still here.”;the idea of sudden transitions – for example as experienced between the citizens of the ex-US after the coup, by Ari (when being arrested, being releases from prison, fleeing to France) and by those suddenly thrown into or out of the party.
Overall I thought this was an outstanding novel – well written, an engrossing set of plot lines, a stimulating series of ideas and above all a continuation of what is rapidly proving to be one of the best literary projects of the English language world and one which I would love to see get the author some overdue literary prize recognition.
My thanks to Picador for an ARC
I sat out there for an hour or so before I went in, looking at the lights of the downtown towers. I knew this strange other version of Kareem wasn't lying, because of the tattoo he'd described to me, TRUE DILIGENCE on the back of Ari's left wrist. Had we had the same childhood, this other person and I? My grasp of quantum physics was weak at best, but that line of text, I thought now, was an entanglement between us, between me and Ari. When I thought of the tattoo, it was easy to imagine a scenario where I'd done something quite different, where Id become a criminal instead of becoming the police. Two sides of the same coin, I thought, and the inevitable next thought was that if I had become a criminal, I would have been good at it, because I was good at everything I'd ever tried in my life. It was an absurd line of thought. I. was very tired. Strange to think there weren't just two versions of me, and two versions of Kareem and Nico and possibly everyone else, but two versions of our country. There was a world where my homeland had fractured into disarray, and another where my homeland had closed like a fist.
March 11, 2026
Exit Party opens in 2031. America is in a civil war, it has broken into territories owned by militias, but there’s finally some good news. The Republic of California is established and curfew is lifted in LA. The natural response is to throw a party, and that’s where we open with Ari, a 48 year old that just spent some time in prison, and she’s ready for her first party. The reader quickly releases all is not well. Reality doesn’t feel…like reality. We the jump in time and space to Paris and Ari is there, but things are…different. I think I need to leave the plot there.
If this book had no author, readers would still know it’s ESJM. We’re plopped into a strange world that feels a little like our own, but not quite. And we’re there *after* the Big Event that made our world a little stranger. We’re here, reading, not to understand what happened, but to understand the inner workings of our characters and how they’re affected by the Big Event. It’s about art and love and authenticity and family and the dangers of surveillance and puts the idea of linear time into question.
I really enjoyed this. Is my new favorite of hers? Probably not, but I could not put this down and oh did it make me miss my dad. Don’t read this for answers, don’t read this for thrills despite the somewhat thrilling premise, read this to be left a bit haunted by what makes you…you. I also recommend reading this when you can pay attention. It’s not difficult to figure out the jumps in time and the sort of multiverse she’s created *if* your locked in. I took some notes and felt a bit like Charlie in the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia man…I imagine I looked a bit crazed yet ready to talk your ear off. More to come closer to pub date!
If this book had no author, readers would still know it’s ESJM. We’re plopped into a strange world that feels a little like our own, but not quite. And we’re there *after* the Big Event that made our world a little stranger. We’re here, reading, not to understand what happened, but to understand the inner workings of our characters and how they’re affected by the Big Event. It’s about art and love and authenticity and family and the dangers of surveillance and puts the idea of linear time into question.
I really enjoyed this. Is my new favorite of hers? Probably not, but I could not put this down and oh did it make me miss my dad. Don’t read this for answers, don’t read this for thrills despite the somewhat thrilling premise, read this to be left a bit haunted by what makes you…you. I also recommend reading this when you can pay attention. It’s not difficult to figure out the jumps in time and the sort of multiverse she’s created *if* your locked in. I took some notes and felt a bit like Charlie in the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia man…I imagine I looked a bit crazed yet ready to talk your ear off. More to come closer to pub date!
September 17, 2026
It's actually kind of a talent to make a premise this cool into a plodding and boring slog. I usually like Mandel's work, but this is her at her worst and most pretentious.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
It’s 2031 and the USA is at war with itself, fracturing into separate entities. Ari, newly released from prison, is in the Republic of California and here, there is some hope with things becoming safer and thus, the LA curfew is lifted. She attends a party with her flatmate Gloria but it’s a very strange, unsettling affair and it’s obvious that something is very wrong. As California becomes increasingly expensive, she moves to Ohio and eventually to Paris, but she remains haunted by that night. As time goes on, more and more strange things occur and it becomes harder to answer the question of what is reality? The novel is divided into two parts, Side A is a divided USA and a B side, a different world, perhaps more advanced but it comes with a big BUT.
Wow, just wow, what have I just read? This is an amazing novel I find utterly gripping as it pushes boundaries, making me think yet it also has a memorable haunting quality to it. I have no difficulty in buying into the concept as there are things in the universe that can’t be explained by logic. There’s a constant sense of unease, of danger breaking out wherever and whenever and there is a very claustrophobic sensation, especially in the B side. There are some vivid images that will stick in my mind especially via the art that plays an important role in the storytelling.
The worlds presented are clearly dystopian but via various characters who have a genuine connection, it presents a more “human” face. It’s complex, multifaceted, incorporating several themes including political instability and divisions, the necessity to survive, there’s friendship, loss and parallel lives and realities. Myself and quantum physics will never be happy bedfellows but the author explains the events so clearly, it presents no difficulty. It’s deeply thought-provoking and should serve as a warning to us all, as nothing here is unrealistic and so, let’s avoid stepping blindly in. Forewarned/forearmed and so on.
The characterisation is excellent, especially that of Ari/Ibari and Nico and like the worlds they live in, they’re complicated.
Overall, this is a fantastic novel which is written with clarity and creativity, it’s dark and it needs focus as sands keep shifting but the payoff is so worth it.
Great cover art, which sums the book up to perfection.
With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Pan Macmillan/Picador for very much appreciated early copy in return for an honest review.
Wow, just wow, what have I just read? This is an amazing novel I find utterly gripping as it pushes boundaries, making me think yet it also has a memorable haunting quality to it. I have no difficulty in buying into the concept as there are things in the universe that can’t be explained by logic. There’s a constant sense of unease, of danger breaking out wherever and whenever and there is a very claustrophobic sensation, especially in the B side. There are some vivid images that will stick in my mind especially via the art that plays an important role in the storytelling.
The worlds presented are clearly dystopian but via various characters who have a genuine connection, it presents a more “human” face. It’s complex, multifaceted, incorporating several themes including political instability and divisions, the necessity to survive, there’s friendship, loss and parallel lives and realities. Myself and quantum physics will never be happy bedfellows but the author explains the events so clearly, it presents no difficulty. It’s deeply thought-provoking and should serve as a warning to us all, as nothing here is unrealistic and so, let’s avoid stepping blindly in. Forewarned/forearmed and so on.
The characterisation is excellent, especially that of Ari/Ibari and Nico and like the worlds they live in, they’re complicated.
Overall, this is a fantastic novel which is written with clarity and creativity, it’s dark and it needs focus as sands keep shifting but the payoff is so worth it.
Great cover art, which sums the book up to perfection.
With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Pan Macmillan/Picador for very much appreciated early copy in return for an honest review.
September 1, 2026
This hurts to say..conceptually I like this but I found the execution dull and detached.
September 5, 2026
Found this to be totally serviceable and well constructed and readable but for a book set in a dystopian future where America has collapsed and everyone is living under mass surveillance it weirdly doesn’t say anything about that or engage with it in any meaningful way????????
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
A hauntingly beautiful and nuanced story of alternate realities, societal collapse, and “what if?” scenarios, Exit Party was an utterly transcendent read of identity, resilience, and family. Taking a deep dive into a handful of deeply relevant themes such as surveillance, freedom, and the price of safety, it was quite a timely tale considering our current world. You see, Mandel took a speculative-slash-sci-fi narrative, mixed it up with a heavy pinch of literary fiction, and held up a warped mirror of what our future could look like if we’re not careful. Mixed into this profound, razor-sharp message, however, was a complex, well-constructed plot that was as poignant as it was mind-bending. I mean, not only did it require me to stretch my mind into the world of metaphysics, but in true Mandel style, some of the questions were left unresolved, forcing me instead to think about the questions posed instead of being handed all of the answers.
As much as I loved the dystopian vibes in this immensely thought-provoking read, I do have to say that the found-family feel, surreal yet evocative atmosphere, and deeply human characters were what made this book hit me so hard. Dreamlike yet also more than just a little bit nightmarish at the same time, the emotionally complex personas at the center of the mystery were easily the stars of the show. Bringing to life the stark beauty of everyday moments while also showing the world on the brink of collapse, Mandel delivered a strong juxtaposition that left both the people and the situations lingering in my head long after I finished the last ambiguous page. So whether you’re already a fan of the great Emily St. John Mandel or a newbie to her immersive works of fiction, I definitely recommend getting your hands on this one now. Lyrical, insightful, and beyond clever, it was a truly awe-inspiring and unforgettable read. Rating of 4.75 stars.
Read if you’re a fan of:
- Genre-twisting novels
- Complex storylines
- Immersive storytelling
- A dystopian setting
- Deeply human characters
- Timely topics
- Thought-provoking themes
- Mind-bending plots
- Lyrical prose
- Morally ambiguity
- A near-future setting
- Found-family vibes
- Multiple timelines and POVs
SYNOPSIS:
Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.
As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.
Thank you Emily St. John Mandel and Alfred A. Knopf Books for my complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
PUB DATE: September 15, 2026
Content warning: gun violence, war, murder, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, gaslighting, terminal cancer, death of a parent, child abuse, mention of: trafficking, addiction
As much as I loved the dystopian vibes in this immensely thought-provoking read, I do have to say that the found-family feel, surreal yet evocative atmosphere, and deeply human characters were what made this book hit me so hard. Dreamlike yet also more than just a little bit nightmarish at the same time, the emotionally complex personas at the center of the mystery were easily the stars of the show. Bringing to life the stark beauty of everyday moments while also showing the world on the brink of collapse, Mandel delivered a strong juxtaposition that left both the people and the situations lingering in my head long after I finished the last ambiguous page. So whether you’re already a fan of the great Emily St. John Mandel or a newbie to her immersive works of fiction, I definitely recommend getting your hands on this one now. Lyrical, insightful, and beyond clever, it was a truly awe-inspiring and unforgettable read. Rating of 4.75 stars.
Read if you’re a fan of:
- Genre-twisting novels
- Complex storylines
- Immersive storytelling
- A dystopian setting
- Deeply human characters
- Timely topics
- Thought-provoking themes
- Mind-bending plots
- Lyrical prose
- Morally ambiguity
- A near-future setting
- Found-family vibes
- Multiple timelines and POVs
SYNOPSIS:
Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.
As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.
Thank you Emily St. John Mandel and Alfred A. Knopf Books for my complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.
PUB DATE: September 15, 2026
Content warning: gun violence, war, murder, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, gaslighting, terminal cancer, death of a parent, child abuse, mention of: trafficking, addiction
October 3, 2026
So much to unpack here. I definitely don't think this is a book for everyone. It is the epitome of a slow burn book. Things don't happen so much as they unfold. Although the narrative involves ideas that are quite immense, the story itself ends up being quite compact.
I think you can tell from the 5 star rating that I really enjoyed Exit Party. It is a book that makes its way to its destination in a very languid fashion. For me, Exit Party is like if Blake Crouch wanted to write prize winning literary fiction. That's no dis to Blake Crouch, I love his books and also gave Dark Matter 5 stars. He just takes a different approach to writing than Emily St. John Mandel.
If you like Blake Crouch's books for the propulsive thrill ride they provide, you might be disappointed in this book. If you think a slightly more cerebral version of one of his books sounds up your alley, I think you'll love Exit Party every bit as much as I did.
I think you can tell from the 5 star rating that I really enjoyed Exit Party. It is a book that makes its way to its destination in a very languid fashion. For me, Exit Party is like if Blake Crouch wanted to write prize winning literary fiction. That's no dis to Blake Crouch, I love his books and also gave Dark Matter 5 stars. He just takes a different approach to writing than Emily St. John Mandel.
If you like Blake Crouch's books for the propulsive thrill ride they provide, you might be disappointed in this book. If you think a slightly more cerebral version of one of his books sounds up your alley, I think you'll love Exit Party every bit as much as I did.
August 24, 2026
you know a book is good when you reach the halfway point and realise you have absolutely no f*cking idea where it could possibly go.
i genuinely cannot explain what happens in this book without ruining it, so just know that at some point i was reading this like i had been personally betrayed by reality.
i'm obsessed.
thank you to the publisher for the free copy
i genuinely cannot explain what happens in this book without ruining it, so just know that at some point i was reading this like i had been personally betrayed by reality.
i'm obsessed.
thank you to the publisher for the free copy
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
“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.”
Spring 2031. Ari Waker has been in prison for almost two decades. Finally released, she walks the streets of LA like some latter day Rip van Winkle (her last name winks at the connection). Things changed dramatically while she was away. There was a coup, after which several states seceded almost immediately, and then several wars began. There is no longer a “United States.” Some parts of the country have formed their own new republics, others are more chaotic and unruled. There are border wars, internal wars between rival militias. Traveling from one region to another is very dangerous.
Ari’s LA is now part of the new Republic of California. Life is getting… closer to normal, but normal is a relative term. Soldiers with bomb sniffer dogs still patrol the street because of the threat of terrorist attacks. Shanty towns have sprung up everywhere. A Walgreens has been repurposed by the Red Cross to house people displaced by fighting elsewhere in what used to be the United States.
On the very night the the Los Angeles curfew is lifted, Ari and her roommate Gloria go to a party to celebrate. Ali won’t know anyone where they’re going — they’re Gloria’s friends — but she had a premonition that she has to be there. She’s had them before (and will again) and has learned to listen to them.
Her world begins to change yet again at this party. People will come and go — people who look exactly like one another but have different names, wear different clothes, appear at different times. And disappear, like the painting that is suddenly there and just as suddenly gone. Something inexplicable is going on.
What’s going on, we will discover, is that Los Angeles exists in two separate universes. Somehow there a breach has appeared in the barrier between the two universes. Some people have passed from one to the other and can’t get back. And doppelgängers now exist in the same plane.
In her new novel, Emily St. John Mandel takes us into the multiverse. There are no Marvel superheroes or villains, of course, no spandex costumes. “Just” two parallel universes with the same geography (if not the same maps) and many of the “same” people. But the universes are very different. Ari’s LA is a remnant of a country that has broken apart, descended into violence. The other Los Angeles is in a country that is no longer the United States but the United State. It's an authoritarian country with universal surveillance and secret police who make sure people don’t engage in “pro-democracy activities or other subversion.”
The two universes are presented one after the other in the book, with a few short transitional interludes between them. The author refers to the first, Ari’s, universe as “Homeland.” The second is “Side B.” Somehow, they are bleeding into one another, and in time a handful of people become aware of the breech.
”Homeland” shows Ari leaving LA and making her way across the continent: getting involved in gunrunning, narrowly escaping ambushes, hiding from assassins, and ultimately fleeing the country for Italy, then France. In “Side B” Ibari (which happens to be Ari’s legal name) is a detective in the Internal Security Service. A secret detective because Service wants it that way: if people can’t be confident that the individual they’re talking to — stranger, friend, family member — isn’t an agent who can send them to prison or disappear them, they’re going to behave. As the State succinctly puts it, “the difference between mayhem and order is control. The State was a fortress and Service was the wall.”
In Exit Party,” St. John Mandel uses the science fiction trope of parallel universes to explore very serious problems in the here and now. “Homeland” is a broken and dysfunctional world. It's not Mad Max territory. Not yet, at least. It’s recognizably our world but it's been altered in ways large and small. Sometimes the author captures this with more a hint of humor. “New York was the capital of the Atlantic Republic now, and the Atlantic Republic wasn’t affordable either, because it was the most stable part of the entire former nation and people will pay anything for the feeling of not living in a war.”
In addition to violence and dissolution, climate change has transformed the world. Wildfires break out around the world. Phoenix is so hot in summer that people sleep all day and move about at night. A child doing a cartwheel in daylight in August would, we read, “have third-degree burns on both hands.” Paris is under a dome with controlled, artificial weather. And of course, (once again reflecting our world) there's class-related civil unrest: “the city would be protected against extremes of weather, and could be sealed off in the event of a pandemic or a dirty bomb. There were protests both for and against: the cost of the dome would be borne by the taxpayers of all of France, but only the elite center of Paris would be protected, and construction would require the demolition of nearly a thousand buildings.”
“Side B” has experienced climate change as well. Massive “solar fans” cool cities during daylight hours, for example. But the main differences between “Side B” and “Homeland” are cultural and technological. “Side B” has “Holospace” rooms. Immunizations against cancer. A colony on the moon. Autocracy: desert prisons, “black sites,” work camps. State orphanages for children whose parents have been taken. Surveillance drones that look like fireflies in the night sky. “The state had taken control of every university, thus saving countless lives and helping to ensure a harmonious society.”
There is, unsurprisingly, an underground Resistance that plays a part in the narrative. The "exit" in "Exit Party" works on several levels.
There’s more than enough action and suspense in “Exit Party” to keep readers eagerly turning pages. Plenty of twists to engage the intellect. Wry humor. And a painting that mysteriously appears throughout. The book will no doubt engage readers on many levels, particularly among those who will try to puzzle out the many links between this and other books by the same author.
To me, though, “Exit Party” functions most powerfully as a the author's premonition of our future. In her two dystopian visions, set ominously only five years from now, we are presented with two dire possibilities facing our world, our country, if current trends continue. Everything the describes is with already with us today, albeit at lesser magnitude: The violence that pops up with increasing frequency, climate change causing catastrophic fires and deadly heat, surveillance, expanding authoritarianism. Reading the book, I found myself thinking more than once of Ben Franklin’s famous remark, “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” (I confess, I was also reminded of Yogi Berra’s equally — more? — famous direction, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” But that’s just how my mind works.) All of which leads one to wonder whether we’ll have the wisdom and will to take a third path that is neither Homeland or Side B.
My thanks to Picador and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in return for an honest review.
Spring 2031. Ari Waker has been in prison for almost two decades. Finally released, she walks the streets of LA like some latter day Rip van Winkle (her last name winks at the connection). Things changed dramatically while she was away. There was a coup, after which several states seceded almost immediately, and then several wars began. There is no longer a “United States.” Some parts of the country have formed their own new republics, others are more chaotic and unruled. There are border wars, internal wars between rival militias. Traveling from one region to another is very dangerous.
Ari’s LA is now part of the new Republic of California. Life is getting… closer to normal, but normal is a relative term. Soldiers with bomb sniffer dogs still patrol the street because of the threat of terrorist attacks. Shanty towns have sprung up everywhere. A Walgreens has been repurposed by the Red Cross to house people displaced by fighting elsewhere in what used to be the United States.
On the very night the the Los Angeles curfew is lifted, Ari and her roommate Gloria go to a party to celebrate. Ali won’t know anyone where they’re going — they’re Gloria’s friends — but she had a premonition that she has to be there. She’s had them before (and will again) and has learned to listen to them.
Her world begins to change yet again at this party. People will come and go — people who look exactly like one another but have different names, wear different clothes, appear at different times. And disappear, like the painting that is suddenly there and just as suddenly gone. Something inexplicable is going on.
What’s going on, we will discover, is that Los Angeles exists in two separate universes. Somehow there a breach has appeared in the barrier between the two universes. Some people have passed from one to the other and can’t get back. And doppelgängers now exist in the same plane.
In her new novel, Emily St. John Mandel takes us into the multiverse. There are no Marvel superheroes or villains, of course, no spandex costumes. “Just” two parallel universes with the same geography (if not the same maps) and many of the “same” people. But the universes are very different. Ari’s LA is a remnant of a country that has broken apart, descended into violence. The other Los Angeles is in a country that is no longer the United States but the United State. It's an authoritarian country with universal surveillance and secret police who make sure people don’t engage in “pro-democracy activities or other subversion.”
The two universes are presented one after the other in the book, with a few short transitional interludes between them. The author refers to the first, Ari’s, universe as “Homeland.” The second is “Side B.” Somehow, they are bleeding into one another, and in time a handful of people become aware of the breech.
”Homeland” shows Ari leaving LA and making her way across the continent: getting involved in gunrunning, narrowly escaping ambushes, hiding from assassins, and ultimately fleeing the country for Italy, then France. In “Side B” Ibari (which happens to be Ari’s legal name) is a detective in the Internal Security Service. A secret detective because Service wants it that way: if people can’t be confident that the individual they’re talking to — stranger, friend, family member — isn’t an agent who can send them to prison or disappear them, they’re going to behave. As the State succinctly puts it, “the difference between mayhem and order is control. The State was a fortress and Service was the wall.”
In Exit Party,” St. John Mandel uses the science fiction trope of parallel universes to explore very serious problems in the here and now. “Homeland” is a broken and dysfunctional world. It's not Mad Max territory. Not yet, at least. It’s recognizably our world but it's been altered in ways large and small. Sometimes the author captures this with more a hint of humor. “New York was the capital of the Atlantic Republic now, and the Atlantic Republic wasn’t affordable either, because it was the most stable part of the entire former nation and people will pay anything for the feeling of not living in a war.”
In addition to violence and dissolution, climate change has transformed the world. Wildfires break out around the world. Phoenix is so hot in summer that people sleep all day and move about at night. A child doing a cartwheel in daylight in August would, we read, “have third-degree burns on both hands.” Paris is under a dome with controlled, artificial weather. And of course, (once again reflecting our world) there's class-related civil unrest: “the city would be protected against extremes of weather, and could be sealed off in the event of a pandemic or a dirty bomb. There were protests both for and against: the cost of the dome would be borne by the taxpayers of all of France, but only the elite center of Paris would be protected, and construction would require the demolition of nearly a thousand buildings.”
“Side B” has experienced climate change as well. Massive “solar fans” cool cities during daylight hours, for example. But the main differences between “Side B” and “Homeland” are cultural and technological. “Side B” has “Holospace” rooms. Immunizations against cancer. A colony on the moon. Autocracy: desert prisons, “black sites,” work camps. State orphanages for children whose parents have been taken. Surveillance drones that look like fireflies in the night sky. “The state had taken control of every university, thus saving countless lives and helping to ensure a harmonious society.”
There is, unsurprisingly, an underground Resistance that plays a part in the narrative. The "exit" in "Exit Party" works on several levels.
There’s more than enough action and suspense in “Exit Party” to keep readers eagerly turning pages. Plenty of twists to engage the intellect. Wry humor. And a painting that mysteriously appears throughout. The book will no doubt engage readers on many levels, particularly among those who will try to puzzle out the many links between this and other books by the same author.
To me, though, “Exit Party” functions most powerfully as a the author's premonition of our future. In her two dystopian visions, set ominously only five years from now, we are presented with two dire possibilities facing our world, our country, if current trends continue. Everything the describes is with already with us today, albeit at lesser magnitude: The violence that pops up with increasing frequency, climate change causing catastrophic fires and deadly heat, surveillance, expanding authoritarianism. Reading the book, I found myself thinking more than once of Ben Franklin’s famous remark, “Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” (I confess, I was also reminded of Yogi Berra’s equally — more? — famous direction, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” But that’s just how my mind works.) All of which leads one to wonder whether we’ll have the wisdom and will to take a third path that is neither Homeland or Side B.
My thanks to Picador and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in return for an honest review.
September 1, 2026
A story of love, loss, and surveillance. In a near future post-collapse USA, Ari goes to a party being held to celebrate the end of the LA curfew. But something is very wrong. There are people there who shouldn’t be there - who shouldn’t exist.
This is a story told in two halves. Ari has recently been released from prison when she goes to the party, and the first half is largely her story - the story of how she navigates a half-life on the periphery of crime in the context of a broken USA consisting of city-states and militia groups. She is haunted by what happened at the party, and by the people who shouldn’t have been there. The second half is the story of those other people. To say much more would be giving away too much, as the mystery of what has happened is maintained for much of the first half.
There are consistent themes of loss, regret, and what might have been, which run through the story and most of the major characters. This is set alongside a country and government that is chaotic, unpredictable, and overbearing - where challenging those in charge can have consequences where a transparent system of justice cannot be depended upon.
The characters are complex and flawed. There is nobody whose story arc isn’t compromised by the events and consequences of the party - with impacts across family, friendship and parenthood.
The story is told across various times and places, often in flashback, spanning decades beyond the time of the party. As the consequences of decisions are played out, those themes of loss and regret become poignant and powerful - and the ambiguous morality of aligning with the state, or attempting to subvert it, has lifelong impact.
I don’t want to say more about the plot, as this is a book that is best experienced without any prior knowledge or expectation - but it is richly imaginative and superbly told.
Thank you #NetGalley and Pan Macmillan / Picador for the free review copy of #ExitParty without obligation. All opinions are my own.
This is a story told in two halves. Ari has recently been released from prison when she goes to the party, and the first half is largely her story - the story of how she navigates a half-life on the periphery of crime in the context of a broken USA consisting of city-states and militia groups. She is haunted by what happened at the party, and by the people who shouldn’t have been there. The second half is the story of those other people. To say much more would be giving away too much, as the mystery of what has happened is maintained for much of the first half.
There are consistent themes of loss, regret, and what might have been, which run through the story and most of the major characters. This is set alongside a country and government that is chaotic, unpredictable, and overbearing - where challenging those in charge can have consequences where a transparent system of justice cannot be depended upon.
The characters are complex and flawed. There is nobody whose story arc isn’t compromised by the events and consequences of the party - with impacts across family, friendship and parenthood.
The story is told across various times and places, often in flashback, spanning decades beyond the time of the party. As the consequences of decisions are played out, those themes of loss and regret become poignant and powerful - and the ambiguous morality of aligning with the state, or attempting to subvert it, has lifelong impact.
I don’t want to say more about the plot, as this is a book that is best experienced without any prior knowledge or expectation - but it is richly imaginative and superbly told.
Thank you #NetGalley and Pan Macmillan / Picador for the free review copy of #ExitParty without obligation. All opinions are my own.
September 27, 2026
[4+] Entering an Emily St. John Mandel novel is always exciting and unsettling. Here there are parallel worlds, doppelgangers and two versions of a harsh near-future. The characters are so grounded and real that I believed it all. Like David Mitchell, Mandel trusts her readers to make the connections and take this exhilarating trip with her.
September 22, 2026
Blown away. I always enjoy falling into ESJMs multiverse, and this was an incredibly gratifying visit. Though very much its own story, this refers back to The Glass House (Victor Akalaitis' paintings are central! The artist dies, the world order explodes, but art and its impact on people live on!) There were also some Easter eggs for those who read and loved Sea of Tranquility. Nothing major, but I squealed when Samir was at a work meeting on the Moon Base! According to the author's note at the end, this is quite connected to The Singer's Gun, but I have not read that book, so I cannot say. I can say that Anton is a character that matters a lot to this story (though he only shows up in telling Ari's story as a character, and then has a sort of cameo), and he was apparently the MC in The Singer's Gun.
I am always amazed at ESJMs ability to keep her stories straight. There are so many things, seemingly disconnected a lot of the time, that get knitted together in her books. That is incredibly hard to do. In that way, her writing reminds me a bit of David Mitchell. ESJM adds a degree of difficulty, though, when she also brings in storylines from past books. This is not a gimmick. It makes total sense and creates a cohesive, if sometimes totally baffling, world. One of the things that most excited me about this book is that there is not just one dystopia. There are terrible parallel universes in 2031 (though there is travel back and forth in time, the defining event here happens just a few years from now). One is a monolithic surveillance state. The other is a post-civil war disintegrated US (and most of the rest of the world) ruled by militias and newly hatched Nation-States.
I said in my progress notes that this was "The Terminator as interpreted by Borges after watching The Simpsons Movie." I stand by that. This is just great.
I am always amazed at ESJMs ability to keep her stories straight. There are so many things, seemingly disconnected a lot of the time, that get knitted together in her books. That is incredibly hard to do. In that way, her writing reminds me a bit of David Mitchell. ESJM adds a degree of difficulty, though, when she also brings in storylines from past books. This is not a gimmick. It makes total sense and creates a cohesive, if sometimes totally baffling, world. One of the things that most excited me about this book is that there is not just one dystopia. There are terrible parallel universes in 2031 (though there is travel back and forth in time, the defining event here happens just a few years from now). One is a monolithic surveillance state. The other is a post-civil war disintegrated US (and most of the rest of the world) ruled by militias and newly hatched Nation-States.
I said in my progress notes that this was "The Terminator as interpreted by Borges after watching The Simpsons Movie." I stand by that. This is just great.
September 18, 2026
A disappointing read for me, and certainly not a patch on Station Eleven. I’d been thinking about Exit Party for quite a while, partly because I was disappointed not to get an ARC, so perhaps I had built up my expectations a little too much.
Set in 2031, after the United States has fractured following civil war, the novel begins with Ari Waker, newly released after 18 years in prison for arranging the attempted murder of her cousin. Los Angeles is enjoying a brief moment of freedom after the curfew is lifted, and Ari goes to a party with her roommate Gloria. But this is not an ordinary party: people seem to have doubles, the host disappears, and a mysterious painting appears and vanishes. From there, the story expands into parallel versions of America, alternative lives and timelines, taking us from a fractured, lawless country to a surveillance state and eventually much further afield.
The ideas are certainly interesting, and Mandel is clearly having fun with the possibilities of parallel worlds and the question of how much our circumstances shape who we become. But for me, the execution never really came together. The plot became increasingly convoluted without giving me enough reason to care about what was happening.
Ari herself never quite came alive for me. We are shown her behaving badly and reminded more than once that she has an innate tendency towards “criminality”, but I never really saw that quality emerge naturally from her personality. The narration tells us what kind of person she is supposed to be, rather than allowing us to discover it for ourselves, which made her difficult to understand, let alone care about.
And the comparison with Station Eleven only made the shortcomings more apparent for me. That novel also imagined a world shattered by catastrophe, but its speculative elements were always anchored in memorable characters and a genuine sense of human connection. I cared about what happened to those people. In Exit Party, I found myself much more aware of the mechanics of the multiple worlds than of the people moving through them. Where Station Eleven made its big ideas feel human, here the ideas often seemed to be the point in themselves.
Given the great reviews this is getting, I am clearly an outlier here. I can see why readers who enjoy Mandel’s more elaborate speculative plotting are enjoying it, but for me this was a two-star read and a considerable disappointment.
Set in 2031, after the United States has fractured following civil war, the novel begins with Ari Waker, newly released after 18 years in prison for arranging the attempted murder of her cousin. Los Angeles is enjoying a brief moment of freedom after the curfew is lifted, and Ari goes to a party with her roommate Gloria. But this is not an ordinary party: people seem to have doubles, the host disappears, and a mysterious painting appears and vanishes. From there, the story expands into parallel versions of America, alternative lives and timelines, taking us from a fractured, lawless country to a surveillance state and eventually much further afield.
The ideas are certainly interesting, and Mandel is clearly having fun with the possibilities of parallel worlds and the question of how much our circumstances shape who we become. But for me, the execution never really came together. The plot became increasingly convoluted without giving me enough reason to care about what was happening.
Ari herself never quite came alive for me. We are shown her behaving badly and reminded more than once that she has an innate tendency towards “criminality”, but I never really saw that quality emerge naturally from her personality. The narration tells us what kind of person she is supposed to be, rather than allowing us to discover it for ourselves, which made her difficult to understand, let alone care about.
And the comparison with Station Eleven only made the shortcomings more apparent for me. That novel also imagined a world shattered by catastrophe, but its speculative elements were always anchored in memorable characters and a genuine sense of human connection. I cared about what happened to those people. In Exit Party, I found myself much more aware of the mechanics of the multiple worlds than of the people moving through them. Where Station Eleven made its big ideas feel human, here the ideas often seemed to be the point in themselves.
Given the great reviews this is getting, I am clearly an outlier here. I can see why readers who enjoy Mandel’s more elaborate speculative plotting are enjoying it, but for me this was a two-star read and a considerable disappointment.
September 30, 2026
Not my favourite from ESJM. It started off on a really high note and then the pace slowed right down and focused on far less interesting timelines. I think if it spent more time focused on the civil war and Kareem’s party itself I would have liked it more.
This also seemed to be lacking the mystery and intrigue that I’ve loved from her previous books, I wasn’t tearing through the pages needing to know what happened and why, because the basics are kind of laid out for us from the start.
This also seemed to be lacking the mystery and intrigue that I’ve loved from her previous books, I wasn’t tearing through the pages needing to know what happened and why, because the basics are kind of laid out for us from the start.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,845 reviews