Exit Party

Mandel's seventh novel publishes on September 15, 2026. It begins in the spring of 2031, the first spring after the collapse of the United States, at a party in Los Angeles held to celebrate the withdrawal of soldiers from the Republic of California—that is, the beginning, it is hoped, of peace. But something strange happens at this party: a kitchen door becomes a portal to an an alternate authoritarian reality. I found this to be thrilling on a plot level and also deeply intellectual; it will hold up to repeated rereadings. Mandel is clearly having fun with her Mandel multiverse here, bringing in characters and referencing plot points from The Singer's Gun, The Glass Hotel, and Sea of Tranquility, and musing about the possibilities of a duoverse, inside a novel that is itself a duoverse, with an "A Side" and "B side." This broke my brain in the best way; I can't wait to read it again.