Our main character, a thirty-four year old woman who works as an undercover agent for shadowy corporations seeking to destroy protestor groups that plan to undermine their major projects, adopts the name Sadie Smith for this operation. A bilingual American, she works her way into a trusting relationship with Le Moulin, a commune in the Guyenne Valley of France, headed by Pascal Balmy, an upper class radical with Sixties-inspired ideas and predator instincts toward young female recruits. A corporation has a plan to construct megabasins for water storage, using all the region’s water for corporate corn farms. This would destroy the valley’s centuries-old farming community, as well as the commune. Sadie’s job is to infiltrate the commune, gain their trust, then turn them toward some public, violent action that would jail the commune members, and clear the way for corporate interests.

Sadie uses her talents and body for her job— expensive breast implants, high tech gear kept hidden, adopting the dress and manners that help her erase her past, be untraceable, beneath any suspicion. She is brought in to the commune to help translate their written records and books that support their philosophy. She observes that women and working class men do all the physical labor and childcare, while the educated and upper class men sit around and talk philosophy, and have their other needs met with no personal responsibility. As narrator, we come to see Sadie’s view as nihilistic— sex is just to work off a need, she suppresses any desire for children, she doesn’t even appear to know who she is anymore, after a life of posing and adopting disguised personas. She is critical of the dress, manners, and discussion of those at Le Moulin, but has no public identity herself.

Sadie penetrates Pascal’s email, and reads all contacts from the guru, Bruno Lacombe, one of the sixties thought leaders for Pascal and the commune. She finds herself deeply influenced by his discourse, and we are left at the end wondering if she might give up her secret career for a more authentic life. Bruno lives in a cave, underground, replicating the lifestyle of Neanderthals, who he believes were extinguished by Homo Sapiens, but were the superior race of men in many respects.

I’m always honest with you— this felt like a depressing book. It tops the best seller list right now, and Kushner’s previous books have been widely read. I felt I needed to give her a try. A book group might be able to dissect some value here, but I think the tone and slow pace will turn people off. It was hard to be on Sadie’s side, since she was unlikeable, depressed, manipulative, constantly negative. I looked forward to Bruno’s emails, but finally felt they were vague and bizarre, more the rantings of a misanthrope. Sadie herself is a misanthrope, selling herself off to corporate and government entities that are often greedy and not in the best interests of the common man or the environment. No wonder she’s depressed and cut off. A book group could discuss how capitalism increasingly serves only those at the top, ruining everything for the rest; or how that may be human nature, as the commune replicates the same gender and class-based power structure they seek to escape. The book is so depressing, I’m not sure you will find the journey worth the effort for such a discussion.