Talking To Emily St. John Mandel About Revision, Timeline Corruption, And Living Without A Floor

The first line of Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel Exit Party sets the tone of the whole book. She writes, “In the first spring after the collapse of the United States, the blossoming of the jacaranda trees felt to Ari like grace.” We have been dropped into yet another one of Mandel’s post-apocalyptic worlds, but, as with Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, it retains a vivid glimmer of hope a