Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
Does the secret to a happy existence lie in a Neanderthal way of life?
That’s one of the questions circulating in this bustling, brainy, genre-busting Booker longlisted thriller which centres on a female spy for hire tasked by a mega bucks agricultural company with infiltrating an eco-activist commune in southern France.
In a novel riven by smart intellectual detours, Kushner entertainingly parses the cacophonous ideological tribalism of 21st century life as her anti-heroine – a marvellously cynical creation with magnificently fake breasts – finds herself drawn to the teachings of the commune’s spiritual leader, a psychologically damaged 1960s radical activist who believed the solution to the destructive appetites of late capitalism lay in the abstract transcendence of neanderthal cave paintings.
Modern idealism has rarely felt so precarious.