The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley

​Survivalists (colloquially referred to as preppers) as a concept fascinate me the same way cults to. And why not? They are at least cult adjacent: the mentality, the ethics, the ideologies.
This is a tale of an ordinary woman, a young lawyer who idea of preparedness mostly involves spending most of her life working to make partner, who falls in with a small group of survivalists.
Well, that’s an oversimplified description of the plot, anyway. When you get really into it, this is a novel about race and class and privilege and a society that puts its citizens through such an obstacle course on the way to what it seems success that it leaves people floundering and grasping at the most unlikely straws. And also, like so many stories, this is about love.
Love is how it begins, anyway. Our protagonist, Aretha, is searching for it, finding dud after dud, until Aaron comes along and checks every box. Aaron is handsome, kind, considerate, self-employed, self-sufficient AND owns a brownstone. Well, some of it, anyway.
For a New Yorker whose idea of being well housed is maybe not having a flatmate, this is a dream come true. But there’s a but. Aaron shares the brownstone with two other people who are less that friendly to others and more than friendly with guns.
All Aaron wants to do is brew coffee and love Aretha and so she is sold, against her bff’s cautionary advice. All in, Aretha moves in, and proximity breeds strange bedfellows out of them all.
Just as Aretha’s professional life is unraveling, her personal life turns into a very peculiar rollercoaster, a well-armed and dangerous one.
In a way, this novel is about the unmaking of the American dream. Aretha, who followed the premise to the tee, finds herself unmooring and spiraling with such a velocity because the world around her, the world she’d worked herself to the bone to fit into, doesn’t reward her for her sacrifices, but in fact, alternates between indifference and menace. If love isn’t lovely and friendship isn’t friendly and employment isn’t enjoyable, then what is there left? Guns.
Survivalists is, thus, ultimately a tale of disenfranchisement.  With race thrown in just right, which is to say cleverly and observationally (like Jordan Peele did in his comedy), not overpoweringly (like Jordan Peele does in his scary movies).
There’s also a great metaphor with the brownstone itself, but you’ll just have tor ead to find out what that is.
Overall, a very good read, one of those things where the narrative and the writing are so strong that you don’t even need to particularly like or emotionally engage with the characters to enjoy. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.