I firmly believe that Emily St. John Mandel is the most brilliant fiction writer of our time. Her words create a language all their own and unlike anything I currently read. They blend with ideas that expand and confound the reader's mind, but you feel lonely when they stop and the story comes to an end. You also realize that the book has changed you.

EXIT PARTY is Mandel’s latest novel. It proposes ideas about future worlds that may or may not be awaiting us but one in which her characters tend to exist in various states with or without the realization that theirs might not be the only universe out there.

"[EXIT PARTY] proves once again that Emily St. John Mandel is a must-read author who always delivers with concepts and ideas that broaden your mind’s eye and worldview."

The book begins with another setting that depicts a future time following some cataclysmic events. This time, we are witnessing the first spring after the collapse of the United States. It is in this world where Ari Waker, who had spent nearly two decades in prison for the attempted murder of her cousin, is existing and living with her roommate, Gloria. The wealthiest Americans had fled to other countries. What was left behind is a collection of new territories and mini-countries mostly existing under martial law where the streets are forever deadly.

The pivotal event that drives this novel is a party at the apartment of their friend, Kareem, where nothing will ever be the same for Ari again. First, she learns that Kareem is the father of the unborn baby who Gloria is carrying. He discloses this before disappearing from the party, never to be seen again. Gloria takes a painting off the wall of his apartment that she claims he offered to her. This would be the most curious moment of the evening for Ari had she not sworn she saw a doppelgänger of Kareem, along with a woman calling herself Nico, who looked exactly like Gloria with a different hairstyle.

Following this bizarre night, Ari finds herself drifting in and out of different occupations. She takes some private investigation work that her friend, Felix, recommends her for since employment for ex-convicts is not plentiful during these troubled times. Ari again runs into Nico, who calls her by a different name. Her existence, as well as the odd circumstances surrounding Kareem and his disappearance, makes Ari realize that she must consider things beyond her own reality and open her mind to the notion that a multiverse may exist.

Once the reader accepts that this concept is what the remainder of this dreamy and trippy novel is based on, the sky’s the limit for what’s to come. I kept thinking of Coherence, an independent film from 2013, in which a passing comet causes multiple parallel universes to converge on the same plane and nothing is what it seems. As time goes on, Sebastian, Gloria’s son from her tryst with Kareem, becomes a major force in the story and is more than a bit curious about everything that is going on. He is particularly drawn to reclaiming Swan Dive, the painting that his mother had once owned after taking it from Kareem’s apartment.

EXIT PARTY will continue with these characters and plot lines and then turn them upside down as readers are presented with a completely different timeline from alternate versions of the same characters. The end result is a novel that is both confounding and exhilarating, and it proves once again that Emily St. John Mandel is a must-read author who always delivers with concepts and ideas that broaden your mind’s eye and worldview.