Cult Classic

I like Sloane Crosley's style of writing, it's so poetic yet witty and she mentions all the little quirks that we see around us but don't really pay attention too. It was a delight reading through all her descriptions of people and things.
I also enjoyed the plot - meeting ghosts of your past one by one sounds horrifying; and from the eyes of Lola, it sounds even worse. Although there were points where I felt like the story was dragging a bit (hence the 3 stars), I was hooked until the end.

The past is too deep a hole to be crowded out by the present

Lola is engaged to "Boots" when she runs into an ex. And then, in the same area of town, another. And another. Eventually it becomes clear that these are not mere coincidences: a former boss, Clive, is running an experiment, and Lola is the subject. Friend and former colleague Vadis is in on it as well, and brings Lola to a synagogue-turned-cultish setting on the Lower East Side where she sees some, but not all, of the inner workings. A twist ending reveals that Lola is not the only subject of Clive's experiment, just as the whole enterprise collapses (literally) on its creator.

As always, Sloane Crosley is marvelous - almost Wilde-esque - at turning a phrase and articulating incisive observations. However, I didn't find Lola especially show more engaging (right book, wrong time?), and the pace was slow to pick up.

Quotes

Being a kid is like this. Your parents pack you a suitcase full of pedagogical messaging and by the time you're grown, it turns out most of the items were perishable anyway. You have to start over, pack your own bag. (4)

Like going to work as a stunt double. Probably nothing bad will happen to you immediately but probably something bad will happen to you eventually. (12)

The defenselessness of our species was all out of proportion with the amount of ways we manufactured harm. (59)

"I feel like time passed and certain boats came by and I didn't get on board." (82)

One thing that never changed about Clive was that twinkling look in his eyes that said, you're the experiment, I'm the control. (105)

Sometimes I would pull up an old [text message] exchange and feel myself fall backward as if through a tunnel, coming out the other end with emotions that were meant to be memories. (115)

Did I have it in me to confront the past without getting stuck in it? (126)

Every second of our lives is pressed from two sides - the present and the past - like coal. (151)

There is a membrane of pride that surrounds the heart and I found that when that area got damaged, it was hard to figure out what took the hit. Sometimes it was the heart; often it was only the cellophane. (181)

Those were my people. People stuck in the past and flung, without their consent, into the present. (201) show less

NOTE: I am a librarian and I received an ARC of this book in MOBI format from NetGalley.

Every time I see a new release by Sloane Crosley, I feel obligated to read it. Crosley made a pilgrimage to my university when I was a freshman to read selections from her recently-published collection of essays, "I Was Told There'd Be Cake." Since then, I have read all three collections of her essays and eagerly awaited subsequent published works.

Let me get the elephant in the room out of the way: Crosley is a better essayist than novelist. In both "Cult Classic" and her first novel "The Clasp," the narrative meanders along slowly, taking anywhere from about a third of the way in to the halfway-point to start picking up the pace, before everything show more is neatly tied up in the last 10% of the book. I typically spend the majority of the novel wondering just where Crosley is going with all of this, then quickly forgive her upon the completion of the last page. Thus, I find that I am often disoriented while reading Crosley's novels, and in rare moments I am unsettled. This is in stark contrast to the experience of reading her essays, which still convey clarity even with the most marked digressions.

That said, why read Crosley's latest novel at all? The protagonist, Lola, is not a person I would characterize as likeable. Moreover, with all of the notches on her proverbial belt from a series of failed relationships, is she even relatable? I feel like a stranger in a strange land in her world, even as she enters the alternate dimension of Clive's playground to confront the ghosts of her past. The plot feels like an overextended short story. Yet I still found "Cult Classic" interesting enough to read in its entirety, in what seemed like a record personal pace for contemporary novels of this length. It was Crosley's essayist persona, which scattered gems of 21st-century wisdom so quickly that blink-and-you-would-have-missed-them, that kept me reading. In the end, I was happy to learn that Lola had grown and salvaged her relationship with Boots/Max, and I appreciated the moral that the final chapters attempted to convey, although I can't quite articulate it in succinct prose. In short: worth the read, even if to just to try to figure out what the heck is going on. show less

In her novel, Cult Classic, Sloan Crosley brings all of the wit and humor from her essays and injects them into her main character, Lola. In her late 30s, serial monogamist Lola has dated a lot of men, but she always managed to mess things up before they got too serious until now. Engaged to marry, Lola can’t quite fully commit to her fiance, and as she begins to run into her exes she examines each relationship and how it influenced her and finds out why she keeps seeing them. This is a funny book with a serious examination of relationships, memory, friendship, and modern romance.

I ended up liking this more than I thought I would, plot reaches noirish levels before denouement that works, but in real life would be incredibly creepy. It kept me going, which is more than I thought would happen in the opening pages.

This is a weird one. I will say this - It took a long time coming but it all kind of make sense in the end if you buy the premise. The premise is about a forty year old woman who is the center of a "club" where she must meet all the men she had failed relationships with in the past. Rationally this all makes no sense at all but if you can suspend your critical side it might work for you. The author does have a sense of humor which benefits her writing.

Are your past relationships hindering you from moving forward? Is there such a thing as closure? Lola, a thirty-something serial monogamist living in NYC, is confronted with these questions when she starts running into ex-boyfriends. It turns out not to be coincidental that she's seeing them, and craziness starts happening with the why/how. This was really entertaining peppered with some great dry comedic dialogue. I laughed a lot. It's also very New York - made me think of the series Girls. It's also reminiscent of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity with the facing of exes and such. I think Greta Gerwig should direct this and cast Lola Kirke as the main character. Just my two cents.