The plot here, like the plots in the previous three Mandel novels I've read, is ingenious, eerie and complex; but not so complex it dampens curiosity ... Mandel knows she doesn't have to belabor her topical social commentary: It's of an unsettling piece with everything else that's packed into the three parts of this capacious novel ... Also unexpectedly veers into an action-escape adventure ... Weird and arresting.
Terrific ... Puzzling it out as it unfolds is one of its many pleasures ... The story deepens and expands in unexpected ways, across generations, into marriages, betrayals and rare acts of decency. In the world of Exit Party, through all of its tragic turns, we find Mandel at her best.
Seamless ... Weakness for catchphrases is my least favorite thing about Exit Party and the Mandelverse in general. It speaks to an impulse to reduce the novels’ mysteries to accessible bromides. Still, the habit is in keeping with the book’s paradoxically optimistic tenor. Ari and her counterpart are smart, resilient, personable women who, for all their wrongdoing, have a gift for finding happiness in the midst of breakdown. The hope they represent is the stabilizing force that bridges Ms. Mandel’s enterprising fiction.
Unfortunately, this book is disappointing, both in its literary and science fiction aspects. The writing is prosaic ... Littered with banalities ... In the end, it’s hard to know what the point of it all is. Perhaps it is simply to follow Ari’s character arc as she tries to redress the wrongs of her life (or lives), but this feels poor compensation in a novel packed with so many big but hazy ideas.
Sophisticated, layered ... [A] multifaceted, sprawling exploration of two very different futures for a country that stands on the brink of massive change. As ever in her own wholly original and singular way, Mandel offers up a completely compelling, richly rendered yarn that’s sure to generate both major interest and discussion.
Mandel always writes with clarity and precision. Her perceptive new dystopian novel explores what is lost in a rush to safety; it’s a hymn to what falls when the center doesn’t hold.
Smart and complex mind-bender ... These layers upon layers of what-ifs and what-could-bes make Exit Party as challenging and thought provoking as it is immersive. With her characteristic literary skill, Mandel invites readers to consider whom they each might choose to be at the end of the world as they know it—and at what cost to their individual and shared humanity.
Masterful ... Mandel’s assured tale offers bracing commentary on the dangers of divisiveness and surveillance, and the propulsive plot is fueled by the unfolding mystery of the initiating party scene. It’s a tour de force.
