Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel: What If the Other Version of You Got It Right?
What if the alternate version of you became exactly the person you always thought you would be, while you got prison, questionable men, weird jobs, organized crime, and a parallel universe that somehow is not doing much better?
Welcome to Exit Party.
This week, Elyse and Katy are talking about Emily St. John Mandel’s literary speculative novel about a collapsed United States, a mysterious party, two versions of the same people, and the uncomfortable realization that who we become might have a lot more to do with circumstance than we would like to admit.
Before we get into the book, we’re talking Dancing with the Stars, Katy’s potentially life-changing night of line dancing in Brooklyn, Katie Jung’s book launch at The Ripped Bodice, our increasingly packed fall book calendar, new Genre’d merch, and an extremely reasonable proposal for Jeff Bezos: please let us lend our Kindle books to our friends again.
Then we get into a book that requires a little more concentration than your average bedtime read.
As Elyse puts it, this is a tea-and-read book.
But absolutely a wine-and-discuss book.
Spoiler Warning
The first part of our episode is spoiler-free.
We talk about the premise, characters, genre, themes, and whether Exit Party worked for us without giving away the major reveals.
Once you hear the spoiler alarm, get out if you haven’t finished the book.
And then come back, because there is a lot to discuss.
So, What Is Exit Party About?
It’s 2031.
The United States has collapsed after a civil war, Los Angeles is emerging from years of instability, and Ari Waker has just gotten out of prison after serving eighteen years.
On one of the first nights without a curfew, Ari’s roommate Gloria convinces her to walk across the city to a party.
And then things get weird.
A stranger calls Ari by a name almost nobody knows.
There appear to be two versions of Gloria.
The host of the party walks into his kitchen and disappears.
From there, the story moves across decades, countries, fractured versions of America, alternate realities, a heavily surveilled authoritarian state, a domed Paris, and even a colony on the moon.
Casual.
What We Cover
We’d call Exit Party literary speculative fiction with dystopian and science-fiction elements.
This is also much more of a themes book than a tropes book.
The big questions running through the story are:
How much of who we become is nature, and how much is circumstance?
How much freedom would you trade for safety?
Would another version of you actually be happier?
What survives when governments, countries, and entire ways of life disappear?
Can art connect people across time, place, and even different versions of reality?
There are also a lot of POVs, shifting timelines, and characters who appear without much warning.
Emily St. John Mandel is not particularly interested in holding your hand.
Katy discovered this the hard way after listening to the audiobook while walking home from happy hour and having to rewind the next morning because absolutely nothing made sense anymore.
Consider this our official warning: maybe do not drink and audiobook Exit Party.
It’s Giving...
Under the Dome
The enclosed-world feeling and the unsettling question of what is happening outside your immediate reality came up almost immediately for Katy.
1984
Not 1989.
Despite Elyse accidentally spending much of the episode referring to George Orwell’s dystopian classic as Taylor Swift’s album.
The B-side universe is a surveillance state where your neighbors, friends, spouse, or children could potentially be reporting you to the government.
Sliding Doors
One different circumstance. One different choice. An entirely different life.
Travelers
Advanced science, alternate realities, and people appearing somewhere they absolutely should not be.
A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray
Katy’s deep-cut multiverse comparison, involving alternate versions of the same people living completely different lives.
And for readers who like literary dystopian fiction, Elyse also sees some Kazuo Ishiguro energy in the way Mandel gives you just enough information to understand the world while still making you work for it.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Seriously.
We sounded the alarm.
Proceed accordingly.
Hot Out of the Slammer and Into the End of America
One of the things we loved immediately is that Ari is not a twenty-two-year-old chosen one discovering she has secret powers.
She is thirty-eight.
She has just served eighteen years in prison.
The country she knew barely exists anymore.
And she is trying to figure out how to build a life with the skills she actually has.
Unfortunately, most of those skills involve crime.
Ari tries washing dishes.
Then she realizes gun running probably pays better.
This is basically her approach to life.
She isn’t chasing glory. She isn’t particularly interested in saving anyone. She is exceptionally good at figuring out how to survive whatever situation she happens to be dropped into.
And when the government has collapsed and your previous work experience is fake passports and criminal enterprises, LinkedIn is probably not saving you.
The Party That Keeps Coming Back
The party at the beginning of the novel becomes the central touchpoint of the entire story.
We keep returning to it.
We keep learning something new about it.
And nearly every major mystery leads back there somehow.
Kareem disappears.
Nico appears.
Gloria steals the painting Swan Dive.
People cross from one reality into another.
What initially feels like one strange night becomes the moment that connects decades of these characters’ lives.
There is also something unsettlingly believable about the way everyone at the party talks about the collapse of the country.
It has already happened.
They survived it.
Now they are at a party talking about it.
Elyse compared it to the strange conversations people had when socializing again after COVID. Something enormous happened, everyone lived through history together, and eventually it becomes the thing you casually discuss over drinks.
Ari Waker Has Multitudes
Ari might be one of our favorite types of morally gray characters because she rarely seems interested in convincing herself she is a good person.
She makes the decision that keeps Ari alive.
Period.
Her taste in men is questionable.
Her proximity to organized crime is impressive.
And people around her have a concerning tendency to die.
When Ari senses that Felix is walking toward danger in Greece, she could stop him.
She doesn’t.
He dies.
Later, Soriano ignores Ari’s warning during unrest in Paris.
He also dies.
At some point Katy had to ask the obvious question:
Maybe Ari is the person everyone should stop hanging around.
Two Worlds, Same Woman
And this is where Exit Party gets really interesting.
On the A side, Ari grows up after her parents are deported and ends up surrounded by people involved in crime.
She becomes a criminal herself.
She survives prison.
She spends much of her adult life moving between unstable countries, questionable jobs, and questionable men.
On the B side, Abari grows up with her parents.
She has a good relationship with them.
She becomes the detective she once imagined becoming as a child.
She has friends, a career, and a respected position in society.
Same person.
Very different circumstances.
Which raises one of the biggest questions in the book:
How much of us is actually us?
If you had different parents, a different childhood, a different government, different opportunities, or one major event went another way, how recognizable would you be?
The B Side: Safe, Advanced, and Extremely Creepy
The B side gives us the opposite version of America.
Instead of almost no government, there is too much government.
The technology is wildly advanced.
There are colonies on the moon.
Crime barely exists.
But everyone is being watched.
The state controls almost everything, and speaking against it can get you arrested, sent away, or killed.
So the book gives us two extremes.
On the A side, you have freedom with very little safety.
On the B side, you have safety with very little freedom.
Naturally, Elyse turns this into a game.
If you had to choose, which side would you live in?
Both of us picked B.
We would love to tell you we would become resourceful revolutionaries rebuilding America from the ground up.
Realistically, that sounds exhausting.
Quantum Entanglement Enters the Chat
If you have ever wanted to hear Elyse become extremely excited about quantum entanglement while Katy slowly realizes she may not actually enjoy multiverse stories, this section is for you.
On the B side, scientists Nico and Fayed are experimenting with transporting matter.
Instead, Nico manages to send herself into the other universe.
From there, the two worlds begin crossing over in increasingly strange ways.
This was very much Elyse’s thing.
Katy remains unconvinced about the entire concept of multiverses.
She also remains unconvinced about space travel unless someone can guarantee luxury accommodations and ideally unconsciousness for the journey.
Fair.
Kareem, Fayed, and the Parenting Swap We Did Not Expect
Eventually, Kareem crosses into the B-side world, where another version of him already exists as Fayed.
And the two men end up essentially trading lives.
The most interesting part is what happens with the children.
On the A side, Nico steps into Sebastian’s life after Gloria struggles to be the mother he needs.
On the B side, Kareem becomes the involved father Nico and Fayed’s children never really had.
Different worlds.
Different people stepping into the same emotional roles.
Once again, the book keeps returning to its central question about nature, nurture, and circumstance.
Let’s Talk About That Painting
Then there is Swan Dive.
The painting is at Kareem’s party.
Gloria steals it.
Years later she sells it to Ari.
Ari becomes obsessed with getting it back after Sebastian steals it from her.
That pursuit indirectly leads to Ari’s death.
And then, on the B side, Swan Dive is hanging in the laboratory where the experiments connecting the two universes take place.
At one point, we were convinced the painting itself might somehow be the portal.
Instead, the novel ends by bringing us back to the artists who created Swan Dive and another painting referenced throughout the story.
For Elyse, that ending reinforces one of the book’s biggest themes:
Art survives.
Governments collapse.
People disappear.
Worlds divide.
But the art keeps moving through all of them.
Katy has another theory.
What if the creation of the painting, or something connected to the artist, is actually where the worlds split?
We have questions.
Freedom or Safety?
The A-side/B-side structure leaves us with one of the most interesting questions in the book.
Would you rather live somewhere unstable where you are essentially free to do whatever you want?
Or somewhere safe and technologically advanced where the government controls almost everything?
Both of us chose safety.
Katy summed up the A side pretty quickly: constantly moving, constantly finding food, constantly figuring out where to go next?
No thank you.
And if someone dropped her into the middle of a field after civilization collapsed?
She would simply lie down.
Honestly, relatable.
Final Thoughts
Elyse: ★★★★★
This is exactly the kind of literary speculative fiction Elyse loves.
The parallel universes, science, dystopian elements, questions about identity, and nature-versus-nurture themes all worked for her.
She still prefers Station Eleven, which she considers something particularly special, but Exit Party made her want to keep working through Emily St. John Mandel’s backlist.
Katy: ★★★★☆
Katy was completely hooked by the opening and loved Ari, the post-collapse world, and the A-side storyline.
The B side lost her a little.
The more the book leaned into the scientific and multiverse elements, the less interested she became, and she would happily have spent more time following Ari through the fractured version of America.
Still, this was the kind of book that followed her around after she put it down.
When you start sitting at your office wondering what alternate-universe-you is doing at that exact moment, the book has clearly done something.
Fast Facts
Book: Exit Party
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Genre: Literary speculative fiction, dystopian fiction, science fiction
POV: Multiple third-person perspectives
Setting: A fractured near-future America, Paris, an alternate authoritarian United States, and beyond
Big Themes: Nature vs. nurture, freedom vs. safety, identity, survival, art, alternate lives
For Fans Of: Station Eleven, 1984, Under the Dome, Sliding Doors, Travelers, A Thousand Pieces of You, Kazuo Ishiguro
Elyse’s Rating: 5 stars
Katy’s Rating: 4 stars
Do You Need to Read The Singer’s Gun First?
No.
Ari appears in The Singer’s Gun, and Exit Party includes connections to Mandel’s other work, but the novel gives you everything you need to understand Ari’s history.
You can absolutely read this as a standalone.
Join the Conversation
Would you choose the A side or the B side?
Do you think there are alternate versions of us out there?
And most importantly, if you met another version of yourself, would you actually want to know how her life turned out?
Come tell us.
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Read widely. Judge freely.
Mini FAQ
What is Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel about?
The novel follows Ari Waker after she leaves prison and enters a fractured post-collapse United States. A strange party introduces a mystery involving disappearing people, alternate versions of familiar characters, and parallel realities.
Is Exit Party a dystopian novel?
Yes, but it leans heavily literary and speculative. The novel explores multiple versions of society, including a fractured America with very little government and an alternate authoritarian version with extensive state control.
Is Exit Party about parallel universes?
Yes. Parallel realities become a central part of the story and are used to explore how circumstances shape different versions of the same people.
Do I need to read The Singer’s Gun before Exit Party?
No. Ari appears in The Singer’s Gun, but Exit Party can be read on its own.
Is the Exit Party audiobook easy to follow?
We found the audiobook more challenging because the book moves between many characters, timelines, and perspectives. If you tend to multitask while listening, this may be one where having the physical or ebook version nearby helps.
Who should read Exit Party?
Readers who like literary dystopian fiction, parallel universes, morally gray protagonists, nonlinear storytelling, and books that leave you thinking about their ideas long after you finish.
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