The real world is messy; making it seem more orderly is the calling of the law-and-order judge, the brilliant but difficult diagnostician and the cult leader. Potential cult members are love-bombed, praised, encouraged to join and reap the rewards that are promised to arrive, suspiciously, after the prospect hands over all their money to their new quasi family.
There was interest in reading about cults pre-pandemic, of course (see: Emma Cline’s “The Girls” or Jeff Guinn’s excellent biographies of Charles Manson and Jim Jones) but in recent years cults in fiction have become quite popular, and they are evolving. In three new novels, people flee to cultish situations in hopes of finding a better life, one less dangerous, one less lonely and one less messy. But communities can quickly devolve into cliques, mobs or compounds that house scared, angry people.
Sarah Langan’s “A Better World” (Atria, $28.99) is set in the creepy fictional town of Plymouth Valley, which cadges its name from the early American mythology of Plymouth Rock. “On the radio, a story about the fall of Berlin,” Langan writes, outlining the grim world of this novel. “Another story about nuclear capture. Working in tandem, United Colonial scientists and Chinese scientists had made another breakthrough that they were now testing in Nevada, Tehran, Chernobyl, and Yangjiang. Except for Tehran, which had been badly hit, the new technology had scrubbed all ambient radiation within forty-eight hours.” The toxic event spurs Dr. Linda Farmer to move her family to Plymouth Valley. The town has all her husband and teenage twins could want: great schools, clean air, copious parks, charming architecture. There is one odd thing, though: The privileged residents practice a mysterious set of religious-like customs they call Hollow.
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Linda initially meets with a generous dose of suspicion — if you lived in a perfect town, wouldn't you be wary of newcomers and outsiders? But her medical skills gain her respect, and her family goes from being seen as misfits to upright citizens. But the world outside seeps in. Linda befriends a woman, Gal, who is not adjusting to life in Plymouth Valley, and when Linda begins to investigate, she finds out some facts that are frightening enough to make her question whether her new home — or anywhere — is safe.
In “The Audacity,” by Ryan Chapman (Soho, $27), disappointment is the rule, not the exception. Guy Sarvananthan, our very timid hero, is panicked about the disappearance of his wife, Victoria Stevens. But Victoria is not your typical gone girl: She’s a serial vanisher, leaving her high-powered corporate world from time to time and cutting off communication, only to emerge from her solitude with a brilliant idea for a new venture. This time, though, Guy is worried that Victoria isn’t rebranding but escaping for good. He is even more worried about their current company’s impending implosion; an exposé about corporate malfeasance is set to publish in 72 hours. Ever the coward, Guy conveniently hops a private jet to a private island in the Caribbean, where the 1 percent are consolidating their power at a Davos-style powwow where the rich and powerful come together and pick one of the world’s problems to solve. In reality, it’s not that lofty — more like the Fyre Festival with no influencers and adequate toilets.
At its core, “The Audacity” is a satire of corporate culture — corporate culture being propaganda developed to make devotion to the company seem like it will lead to lots of money and larger fulfillment. Chapman contradicts this and floats the provocative idea that ridiculous individual wealth might be capitalism taking its last breath. Victoria pipes in occasionally from an undisclosed location in the California desert, where she has either joined a cult or taken a wrong turn on her way to a resort to Palm Springs. More immediately troubling is Guy’s drinking and drugging and general bad behavior at the conference, where Chapman’s skewering of the rich, the very rich and the ultrarich as they debate the world’s ills is as incisive as it is hilarious.
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“Day One,” by Abigail Dean (Viking, $29), has the bones of a cozy mystery but the flesh of a thriller. Dean takes the distinctly American figure of the random shooter and drops him into the picturesque village of Stonesmere in the Lake District of England. On the day of a primary school’s play, a lone gunman strikes with devastating results. After the shooting — which occurs on what later becomes known as Day One — the confusion and anger in Stonesmere threatens to transform this idyllic town into a profoundly unsafe place.
The novel is set in the tranquil, scenic landscape where William Wordsworth composed his ballads. “I wandered lonely as a Cloud,” the poet wrote, and for the Romantics, solitude was an exalted state that produced poetry and philosophy. But the backdrop to Romanticism was the violence of the French Revolution, and the love of isolation can double as protection from dangerous mobs. Present-day Stonesmere is too consumed by grief for art to thrive or offer solace. Instead, speculation is rampant about further trouble from the rumored forces behind the shooter. And as we know, conspiracy theories are the perfect building blocks for cults.
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