Fascinated by cults after playing the game Far Cry 5 or watching Netflix’s Wild Wild Country? Here are a few book suggestions:
A recent literary fiction favourite, Emma Cline’s The Girls is inspired by the story of Charles Manson and his followers. The first time Evie sees “The Girls,” especially black-haired Suzanne, she is instantly drawn to the wildness and freedom that radiate from the group. Desperate to find her place in the world, Evie wants nothing more than to become one of them. In the orbit around an aspiring musician named Russell, Evie feels special for the first time and gets the attention and recognition she has been craving — but at what cost? The Girls is a raw, emotional exploration of what draws people to cults, how easily one can get lost in the world and the universal need to belong.
An epidemic that causes people to spontaneously combust will likely make people join any group that promises safety and salvation. In The Fireman, a post-apocalyptic novel by Joe Hill, Harper gets infected with the virus at the same time she discovers that she is pregnant. She decides to keep the baby and is hunted by those, including her husband, who vow to purge the world of the diseased. Eventually, she finds Camp Wyndham, where Mother Carol and her group have some mysterious ways to halt the symptoms. But is this haven is too good to be true?
Hill, known for his horror novels (as well as for being the son of the legendary Stephen King) , knows all about things that go bump in the night but in The Fireman, he shows that your fellow human beings can often be much scarier than supernatural creatures.
Let Laura Lam’s False Hearts take you into the cult of Mana’s Hearth, a closed commune that lives without technology in a near-future San Francisco. Conjoined twins Taema and Tila escaped from the commune years ago, when they were dying of heart failure and were denied medical treatment. Now separated, Taema feels miles away from her sister, not knowing what she does anymore. Then, Tila shows up one night covered in blood and is later arrested for murder. In order to clear Tila’s name, Taema has to pretend she is her sister and she is not going to like what she finds.
In Laurie R. King’s thriller A Darker Place, Anne chooses to return and put herself back into the “community” — repeatedly. Anne believes that years ago, her departure from her cult was the impetus of a mass suicide that killed her husband and daughter. Guilt-ridden, she volunteers to go undercover for the police to gather information about similar communities. Her upbringing allows her to slip in and out of the made-up personas to gain any group’s trust. But her new mission to investigate the Change community may prove a bigger challenge. If she wants to come out alive, not only does she have to outsmart the seemingly omniscient cult leader Steven, but she also has to not let her growing attachments with the children in the community get in the way, especially with a girl who bears an uncanny resemblance to her daughter.
If you have read anything written by China Melville, you know that his stories never fit nicely into a genre. His novel Kraken begins with an impossible theft of a nine-metre-long giant squid specimen from a London museum. What seems to be a standard mystery set-up turns weird very quickly in the hands of Melville. Soon, you encounter a back tattoo that speaks; people with power to make origami out of anything (inanimate or animate); a secret government ragtag team; a cult (of course) that believes the kraken is their god; and many other bizarre characters and situations. And in the middle of all this craziness is Billy Harrow, just an ordinary guy who works at the museum. Kraken will have you echoing Billy on every other chapter: “Would someone just tell me what’s happening?”
Go join your local library for more great reads.
A Good Read is a column by Tri-City librarians that is published on Wednesdays. Virginia McCreedy works at Port Moody Public Library.
