Emily St. John Mandel explores the multiverse in 'Exit Party'

Emily St. John Mandel, the acclaimed Canadian author of the dystopian bestseller 'Station Eleven', returns to bookstores with her seventh novel, 'Exit Party'. Set in a Los Angeles of 2031, where the United States is torn by civil war and California has just declared itself an independent republic, the book follows forty-eight-year-old Ari Waker, recently released after 18 years in prison.

The narrative takes a surreal turn when, during a party to celebrate the end of wartime curfews, Ari begins to notice inexplicable events: a woman changing her dress between one room and another, a painting that disappears, a guest who vanishes. The house appears to be a portal to another world, a parallel universe where the characters lead radically different lives.

Mandel structures the novel in two halves, like an old vinyl record, with a 'side A' and a 'side B'. In the second, America is an Orwellian surveillance state called the 'United State', where Ari (renamed 'Ibari') works as an agent. The author plays with scientific theories like quantum entanglement and the multiverse, posing philosophical questions about freedom, chaos, and stability.

With 'Exit Party', Mandel also continues to build her literary multiverse, connecting characters and events to her previous novels like 'The Singer's Gun' and 'The Glass Hotel'. The result is an ingeniously complex work that, despite sometimes careless prose, invites an immediate rereading to grasp all the details of its intricate plot.