Starred review from January 15, 2018
The lone survivor of a cult tries to readjust to life as an average citizen, but when he meets a girl whose quest for honesty and happiness reminds him of his younger self, his future begins to look like his past.Mason Hues' life has been one horrible situation after the next. His adopted father's predatory behavior propelled Mason to run away from home to join The Survivors, a cult whose members inject the drug Cytoxin--commonly used in chemotherapy treatments--which sickens them to the point of immobility. The closer the cult members get to death, they say, the more they gain a new appreciation for life, an appreciation which evolves into a longing to spread their "teachings" to others and culminates in a mass murder-suicide called the Day of Gifts. After surviving the Day of Gifts, Mason spends time in a juvenile penitentiary and a psychiatric ward, then rejoins society and meets Talley, with whom he forms a relationship that soon begins to follow the same downward spiral as Mason's life with The Survivors. With his second novel, Stenson (Fiend, 2013) proves to be a more articulate, more empathic, and more intelligent version of Chuck Palahniuk. Stenson's sentences devastate, and his characters are nuanced and warm, which makes the terrible things that happen to them and the terrible choices they make more painful to read about. Stenson's cutting descriptions of drug use, violence, and nihilistic despair suffocate the reader like a noose. Here's his description of "the American Dream," for example: "Every conversation is one-sided, a mirror reflecting looks and status and wealth. Every person is steeped in want...filling themselves with goods and sex and alcohol and validation so they forget about the fact that they all will die." Themes of immortality, sacrifice, self-hatred, and the artificiality of modern life feel new in Stenson's world, a world teeming with prophetic visions, existential provocations, and ideological assertions that will leave readers questioning the way they lead their lives.A book that manages to break your heart, make you dizzy, and punch you in the gut all at once. You will be hard-pressed to find a novel as dark or intense in any bookstore.
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Starred review from May 28, 2018
Stenson (Fiend) delivers an eerie, complex, and unsettling portrayal of a traumatized teen caught between the brainwashing tenets of a self-destructive cult and the more common indoctrination into mainstream society’s expectations. Just released from a three-year stint in a Colorado mental health facility, 18-year-old Mason Hues narrates his life in present tense. As he puts his life back together, he works at a thrift shop and falls for owner Talley. He tells her that at 15, he ran away from a home where his father masturbated in his bedroom doorway. Mason fell in with the Survivors, a cult led by charismatic Dr. James Shepard, whose Munchausen-like belief that “sickness bears honesty, honesty bears change” prompts cult members to willingly inject themselves with chemotherapy drug Cytoxan so as to spark unconditional love for those worse off than themselves. Mason was the 37th (and final) member, but he left the group just before their perpetration of a string of violent acts that became known as the Day of Gifts. Talley, emotionally fragile herself, convinces Mason to revive the cult. Stenson infuses Mason’s chilling matter-of-fact recitation of Survivor platitudes with insight into a young man’s psychological descent. This novel is a provocative, thoroughly gripping ride.
Starred review from February 1, 2018
Only a year after receiving his MFA from Colorado State University, Stenson published an offbeat first novel, Fiend (2013), about a group of methamphetamine users thriving during a zombie apocalypse, which rapidly developed a sizable counterculture following. His latest work sparkles with just as much edgy creativity as it tells the story of Mason Hues, aka Thirty-Seven, the only remaining member of the Survivors, a suicidal cult run by a former oncologist euphemistically dubbed by the media as Dr. Sick. At 15, after fleeing a sexually abusive father, Mason lands on the doorstep of a remote Colorado mansion harboring 36 devotees of a man known as One, who believes that keeping people in a state of chronic, chemotherapy-induced illness fosters greater honesty and deeper connections. In an unnerving but spellbinding story line that alternates between Mason's days among his twisted adopted family and his later post-traumatic struggles following the cult's self-destruction, Stenson shines a spotlight on the darker side of humankind's primal yearning for family. His brilliantly vivid prose and striking characters deserve the widest possible audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)