Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Six notable novels about freaky cults

Brian Evenson's latest book is The Warren.

One of his six favorite "weird cult novels—which is to say, cult novels that don’t follow the typical tropes that cult novels do," as shared at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:
Sway, by Zachary Lazar

This year everybody is talking about Emma Cline’s novel The Girls for its portrayal of a Manson-like cult, but for my money, Lazar’s Sway is the more interesting Manson novel—partly because it does more than reassert what I already knew about the Manson Family. Sway is a novel that moves between the films of Kenneth Anger, the early days of the Rolling Stones, and the Manson family, using those three lenses to give a picture of the period that’s vivid and illuminating, particularly at the moments when the lenses slide over one another. Sway understands that cults are always part of a broader culture and that they express the subconscious of that culture.
Read about another entry on the list.

Sway is on the list of forty-six essential rock reads.

My Book, The Movie: Sway.

The Page 69 Test: Sway.

--Marshal Zeringue