Getting my hands on A Thousand Natural Shocks has been a real quest this year. The e-book is not for sale internationally, and I couldn’t find any booksellers who could import it to Bulgaria. I even wrote to the publisher, seeing if there was any international shop that had an e-book. No dice. It was frustrating. I was like “take my money, give me the book!” but there was no way to get it. Part of life living in Europe, I guess.
Luckily, my library in the US decided to carry the e-book, and I was finally able to read it.
Now, WHY was I craving this book? It had everything I like. Memory issues, strange drugs, cults and serial killers. I thought it was a fitting way to wrap up my deep dive into cults and echo back into my deep dive into serial killers.
The Setup
A Thousand Natural Shocks is told from the POV of Dash, a man who would do anything to erase his memory. Anything includes joining a cult, breaking into houses, and stealing people’s identities. But when he starts to write about a local serial killer, the killer comes out of hiding and hunts him down.
The Cultishness
The cult in the book is housed in a downtown warehouse. In many ways, it is a classic cult: evil, wants to control you, very charismatic leader. From the first meeting, the reader feels unease about the cult. Even Dash doesn’t seem to quite buy into it. But he wants what they’re offering: a completely new beginning, where he doesn’t even remember his past. This isn’t a metaphor, either. They have pills that completely erase your memories. But it does, quite cleanly, sum up why most people get sucked into cults:
- They want something the cult is offering. Maybe that is community and belonging, but often it is something more tangible. Safety. Shelter. Help getting off drugs. Forgiveness. Acceptance.
- They have some trauma in their past.
Beyond the why of joining a cult, the book explores how deeply a member gets intwined with a cult. By forcing Dash to take part in illegal activities, they break off any out he might have, and gain leverage to force him to do worse and worse stuff. Towards the end of the book, we even wonder how many times Dash has gone through the process of taking the pills and resetting his memory, and we realize that the cult isn’t just using his guilt and shame to control him, but implanting even stronger guilt and shame each time a person takes the pills to wipe their memories.
The Serial Killer
The serial killer has been inactive for several years and only comes out when Dash writes about confronting him in a parking lot and on his street. It turns out the person Dash was seeing was his memories of his father. The actual serial killer is one of the people controlled by the cult (probably a series of people controlled by the cult). He’s a big part of the physical suspense of the story — constantly setting a ticking bomb — but he’s nothing in comparison to the leader of the cult, who controls your mind and memories and can turn you into anyone.
I think this plays into my theory that cults are more unforgivable than serial killers in fiction than serial killers because cults manipulate your mind and change you whereas a serial killer “only” kills you (perhaps with some torture first) — with a serial killer, you die yourself.
I think this is why the most terrifying serial killers are the ones who break their victims, forcing them to become someone else, before killing them. An example that still haunts me is The Poughkeepsie Tapes — worse than the physical torture of Cheryl was that, in the end, the killer won her mind.
The Mind
More than social control and more than serial killer games, this book was about the mind — specifically about the way we deal with guilt and grief, two of the most unpleasant feelings we experience, and how they can often be wrapped up as one.
I had a hard time connecting with the main character because I saw him as weak for being willing to give up his self to rid himself of his memories. But then, I’ve never lost someone super close to me, and I’ve certainly never murdered (or maybe murdered) one of my parents. But I have hidden from my memories in drugs and alcohol. I’ve left a state or a country to rebuild myself from the ground up. I haven’t gone as far as Dash, but I have wanted to forget — and that desire; and the overwhelm of guilt, is probably worse than a cult or a serial killer. At least in books.
