Cataclysm

by Tiffany Meuret

When the United States collapses into post-apocalyptic ruin, The Woman flees her suburban home. Chronicling her life from the first shock to building and ruling a dieselpunk fiefdom, her mind deteriorates, and she obtains a nuclear weapon.

One hundred years later, a boy feeds her journals to an AI to answer lingering questions about his heritage. When the AI becomes sentient, weaving its own stories about The Woman and what her final moments might have been, the boy must confront a deranged power just like the person it was created to emulate.

Told through journal entries, Cataclysm is a story of how unrepentant rage permeates generations.

220 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 2, 2024

Reviews

[Just Another Final Girl Review (Brittany) Levely-Connolly]

***note I want to give this a 4.5 but I can’t.***

A Cataclysm has occurred in the USA and the result is a sudden deterioration of civil society across the country. Cities are now devolved into chaos and mob violence. Luckily you live in a suburb, at adistanced from the disorder, but now you must make the most important decision a parent will ever make and could even mean life-or-death for you and your loved ones. The mobs have slowly be making their way out of the cities, into the suburbs and getting closer and closer to your neighborhood.Will you:
A)stay and fortify your home, defend your neighborhood.

B)Leave home and look for a safer place to live. Pack what portable food and water you all can carry and survival essentials available at home. Leave with your spouse and children, knowing that you are probably never going to see your home again and embark on a nomadic journey to find safety and shelter.

C) Let your family members make their own decisions.But the civilized world is at an end, you weren’t made for this new world. Death is better than what is out there.

Welcome to Tiffany Meuter’s post-apocalyptic novel Cataclysm. Where ‘The Woman’ and her extended family are forced to make the above decision.

“Finally, I can be the murderous bitch I’ve always wanted to be.”

Through journal entries written by ‘The Woman’, a mother who will do anything in the name of ‘Love’ for her kids to ensure their survival, the reader gets a inside look at the life and losses of a typical nuclear family during and after the breakdown of civil society in a near future USA. And the AI computer program developed to help identify her decedents and identity 100 years after her death.

Protag: is an imperfect woman who is writing her own experience during the end of USA as we know it and life in the aftermath as people try to scavenge and build community to survive out of the rubble.

Genre:
Horror
-survival horror
-domestic horror
-technological horror
Science fiction
-post-apocalyptic
-Dystopian
Speculative
General adult fiction
Culture and social criticism

“Love is an empty word. It’s too vague. Insufficient. What does it mean to love? How can one love a partner and love a parent and also love a child?”

Themes:
-love
-survival
-anger and rage
-living for children
-inherited trauma
-power and corruption
-hate of parent
-ghosts/past haunts you- can’t escape it

Trigger warnings:
-death, murder and suicidal ideations and act itself featured
-drug use and addiction

“I would kill to feel so fucking alive like that, I have to keep my rage in a jar and use sparingly because it spoils to suicide when exposed too long to air.”

This was the first book I’ve read by Tiffany but I must say I actually really enjoyed it. But I didn’t fully like the final part of book with the inclusion of the AI’s train story metaphor. It was a good metaphor and moral lesson to summarize the woman’s story but it didn’t flow well for me with the overall narrative and the book could have been just as good without it. I would have loved more entries from the woman instead. I got this book as an ebook arc copy from netgalley, thank you spaceboy books llc for letting me read it early!

Tone:
Saddeness
Cynical
Bleak
Detached
Aggressive
Accusatory
Secretive
Violent
Sarcastic
Suspicious

PoV: multiple
1st person- journal and computer files
3rd person limited
3rd person -conversation between AI and man in transcript format
3rd person all seeing-train story

For fans of:
-‘The Road’

***not for people who want happy ending**+¥

[Ashley Malone]

I absolutely loved the way this book was written! The journal entries and the fact that The Woman remains nameless really allow the reader to feel immersed in the events and project themselves onto the narrator. I especially liked how this was a post apocalyptic horror novel but the main focus was the humanity behind the characters and not the apocalyptic events themselves. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

[Cassondra Windwalker]

I should have made note as I read, of the many lines in this book which startled me with their ability to clearly, concisely, and terrifyingly encapsulate the human tragedy, but I was too swept up in the story to distinguish myself from it. Tiffany Meuret has thoroughly outdone herself - and the rest of us - with CATACLYSM. It’s a common enough vanity, to decline to name the protagonist of a book, but so rarely does it accomplish this: the complete absorption of the reader into the character. Even what might seem particular, the fact that she is The Woman and not The Man, in the end evaporates into simply the being of human.
It’s hard to describe what this book is, except to say it’s a diary of all our times. A diary of both the wretched and the beautiful ways we love, we let go, and we hold on, to our sorrow. Above all it is a diary of our time, as we wrestle with the question of what it means to be human and what it means to be other. Perhaps CATACLYSM is horror, perhaps it is science fiction, perhaps it is literary fiction, but it is in any incarnation an excoriation of our impulses, of what drives us and of how we lie to ourselves.
No spoilers, but I do feel compelled to say this: Dearie, you are wrong. You may be the most human of us all. I did save for myself one line, which is heartbreakingly relevant in its immediacy: “[People] fight only what they can see, which is each other.”
If only we could grow into something more than people.

[Brooklyn Attic Books]

I read Cataclysm by Tiffany Meuret in 1 sitting. I think I held my breath the whole time...just kidding, but it felt like I did. This was by far the best indie book I've read in a long time. Thank you!

This is an epic journey that spans 100 or so years between a complete fallout scenario to sentient A.I. technology. It follows the origins of a warrior woman who rises to power using brute force and builds a community of survivors, all in the name of making sure her children are protected and survive in the world order.

She must have left some kind of mark on the world, as her journals are entered into a computer to decipher who she was and why she did the things she did. However, the AI in her image acts just as suspicious and tactical as the Woman herself used to.

This was a crazy original story. It was very well written with prose spanning from parental love for ones child, to lovers quarrel and madness setting in. It just about had everything.

Thank you to Netgalley, Tiffany Meuret and the publishing company for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

[Stephanie Long]

I read this over just 2 days, but my brain is gonna take 2 years to process. And I mean that in the best way. So many layers. I am a sucker for "journal" style writing, and this did not disappoint. I appreciate the layering and mystery woven around these characters, who in spite of being nameless, tugged at all the emotions. Definitely went in unexpected directions. A few typos or missing words here and there, but because of the format, that didn't take me out of the story, and as a matter of fact made the diary aspect of it more convincing.
Great weekend read. 4 stars!

[Stephanie]

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a review copy.
Cataclysm is unlike any book I've ever read. Some of the passages about motherhood actually made my breath catch; they were so true and beautiful. It's also quite a meditation on what it means to be human and the things we'll do to try to keep our children safe. If you have an "avant garde horror" category in any reading challenges, this would be an excellent choice.

[Valerie Patrick]

"let the president be civil. He can practice civility while I make my way to his door drenched in blood"

this gave me such strong The Road/ Station Eleven vibes mixed with themes of feminine rage and generational trauma. The plot abandoned me many times, but the vibes stayed devastating. I wasn't expecting the writing to be as compelling as it was, I read this in one sitting! Definitely a little hidden gem

[JXR]

Hey all! This was a pretty unique and pretty fun horror so I would recommend, darkness came out of like every pore oml. Thanks for the arc and cheers!

[Tiffany Meuret]

Tiffany Meuret has yet to put out a bad book! 5 stars!

Signed,
Tiffany Meuret

[Bookish Dee]

Sh*t moves fast in the apocalypse."

I finished this book early in the day & took the remaining afternoon to decompress...

Cataclysm is such an apt name for the story found within these pages.
The passages often leave you with a sense of disarray, heftiness, cynicism, and despondency.

I enjoyed, in the most unsettling way, the story told by Tiffany Meuret about a woman-a mother-a machine & the catastrophic possibilities of unchecked & unbidden rage found within.

I was not expecting to read this book & find such a deep reflection of my own intrusive thoughts & introspections as a mother & overall-average human being living in, but mostly questioning, today's time & current events.

Do not misunderstand, I felt a bit lost throughout the story, having to backtrack & reread for clarification on some occurrences. I am still left feeling unsure if I fully know what happened in this book. But I think that is part of the point, part of the intrigue.

The questions & concepts presented by Meuret (e.g. what defines a human/the elements of control/mothers are wired different-BEWARE!) allow for a true examination of self & our perceptions of the world we currently reside in.

"I have to keep my rage in a jar and use sparingly because it spoils to s*icide when exposed too long to air."

"All they had they squandered. How very human of them."

"Power is not exponential - it requires a target. Without one, it devours you whole."

Thanks to NetGalley, Spaceboy Books, & of course, Tiffany Meuret for this unusual, apocalyptic read. Pub Date 04.02.24