Book Review : Kevin Maloney - Cult of Loretta (2015)
I said, "I think you're perfect."
She said, "Yeah, but that doesn't count because you love me more than you should."
Sometimes it feels like I was a teenager in another lifetime. That I was born to be a middle-aged guy. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't go back to that age for a million dollars but it's nice to relive the emotional violence of that age with a little perspective. Kevin Maloney's short novel Cult of Loretta is about young adults in love, trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be. I loved it not because the protagonists are people I aspire to be, but because they are people who remind me of my younger self. Up to the point where they all start to take hard drugs out of the blue anyway. It's a bleak love song to a devastating modern condition: being in love with the idea of being in love.
Cult of Loretta is the story of Loretta Carter, a young,mysterious nympth from Oregon narrated by one of her numerous boyfriends Nelson. The novel keeps going back and forth in Nelson's present and memories, forming a fragmented portrait of a promiscuous young woman who uses sex to get whatever she needs out of men, but who keeps chasing wilder and wilder ideas of what her own happiness should be. Nelson and his friends are all in love with her, following Loretta down the rabbit hole of her untamed and unhealthy visions of how things should be. Except that Loretta falls in love with just about every boy she meets.
It's not easy being young. Everything you experience is painful or exhilarating, or sometimes both because you have no perspective whatsoever on what you're doing. Everything is happening to you for the first time. Cult of Loretta carries that emotional immediacy, that melodrama of youth that is so endearing to people who have lived it. Young love is selfish and author Kevin Maloney understands that feeling as we witness Loretta Carter slowly self-destructing by searching for something that was forever taken away from her. Cult of Loretta is a sneaky tragic novel because all she sees in the men she loves is the reflection of her own sex addiction.
She said, "Have you ever noticed Nash's eyes? They're like Amazonian tree frogs."
I said, "That's kind of funny because Nash's eyes don't even exist."
Loretta Carter is a tragic figure and Kevin Maloney's novel is centered around revealing her fragmented past to the unconditionally loving Nelson, but it's not the only thing Cult of Loretta has going for itself. I've also thoroughly enjoyed its portrait of youth, which is closer to the youth I lived than the starry-eyed, idealistic bullshit portrayed in most fiction. I kind of lost touch with the novel emotionally after the characters started dabbling with intravenous drugs, but Maloney kept me reined in with flashback chapters. I loved the fact that I didn't know whether I should laugh or feel terrible at certain chapters. It showcased Kevin Maloney's ability to completely change the emotional range of his story from one paragraph to the next.
Cult of Loretta was a short and pleasant read. I've connected hard with the first part because it reminded me of my own teenage years, but the novel slowly morphs into something more abstract as the characters enter adulthood and, at the same time, start struggling with hard drugs. Then, Cult of Loretta becomes more of a poetic than a narrative pleasure. It's an odd little novel you can pick up and read whenever you like because most chapters are self-contained. Cult of Loretta is another pleasant literary UFO delivered by Lazy Fascist Press. It has a special place in my heart though for the universality of its themes and the accurate portrait of 1990s youth that it draws.
