The Lola Quartet – Emily St. John Mandel

I'm reading my way through Emily St. John Mandel's complete catalog ahead of the release of "Exit Party," which she's teased will feature characters from her earlier trio of novels. That's the only reason I picked up "The Lola Quartet,” and probably the only reason most devoted Mandel readers will.

This is early work, and it shows. The fluid dialogue, character interiority and structural confidence that made "Station Eleven" a revelation and "The Glass Hotel" my favorite of her novels are largely absent here. What you get instead is a choppy, noir-inflected mystery set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis — competently assembled, occasionally interesting and populated almost entirely by characters who are, without exception, kind of dumb.

Gavin Sasaki is a New York journalist whose career implodes after he's caught fabricating quotes while desperately trying to survive round after round of layoffs. His sister offers him a job back home in Sebastian, Florida, working with foreclosed properties. She also shows him a photograph of a 10-year-old girl who looks remarkably like him,  and who shares the same last name as Anna, his high school girlfriend.

He uses his journalistic skills to track down Anna, who has been on the run for years after stealing more than $100,000 from a drug dealer in Utah. Mandel moves between timelines and characters, gradually revealing what happened to Anna and the other members of the Lola Quartet, the jazz group Gavin played with in high school, and who he must reconnect with to unravel the mystery of Anna and the child.

The main problem is Anna. She has caused virtually every problem in the novel — sleeping with two best friends, fleeing with one, stealing the money, dragging Jack and his roommate into her mess while systematically avoiding Gavin and her own stepsister — and yet every character bends over backward to protect and enable her. Her broken home backstory is a convenient excuse but not really developed, so by the end I was less sympathetic than actively angry. WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE HELPING HER?

Gavin is an equally difficult protagonist — passive, unreliable and prone to convenient lapses in memory and heat stroke. The supporting cast are underdeveloped enough that their choices rarely feel motivated by anything beyond what the story requires of them. Everyone is self-absorbed. Everyone keeps obvious secrets. And everyone would save each other a great deal of trouble if they simply had one honest conversation. By the end, the entire cast feels like spineless enablers making increasingly terrible decisions.

That's what separates this early Mandel (and “Last Night in Montreal”) from her later work. In "Station Eleven," "The Glass Hotel" and "Sea of Tranquility," seemingly disparate lives intersect in ways that reveal something larger about connection, fate and the ripple effects of our choices. Here, the threads certainly come together, but too often they feel tied in neat bows.

Sarah Scott's narration doesn't help. Her performance of Daniel is almost laughable, and many of the other characters have a sleepy, clueless quality that unfortunately matches the material all too well.

What keeps this from being a complete loss is Mandel's instinct for structure. You can see her learning to connect timelines and perspectives, and there are moments where the plotting clicks into place in ways that hint at the novelist she was becoming. The financial crisis setting is also genuinely interesting, because those same preoccupations would later produce something as good as "The Glass Hotel."

"The Lola Quartet" is a document of an author finding her way toward greatness. It's worth reading only if you're determined to read everything she's written. I am, so I did. I'm just not eager for "The Singer's Gun."

Rating (story): 2/5 stars

Rating (narration): 2/5 stars

Format: Audiobook (library loan)

Dates read: August 3 – August 6, 2026

Multi-tasking: Encouraged. The story doesn't demand the concentration her later work does, which is both an excuse to multi-task and a mild indictment.