Rating: B+ | 87% | ★★★★☆
Synopsis (from Goodreads): One night in New York City’s Chinatown, a woman is at a work reunion dinner with former colleagues when she excuses herself to buy a pack of cigarettes. On her way back, she runs into a former boyfriend. And then another. And . . . another. Nothing is quite what it seems as the city becomes awash with ghosts of heartbreaks past. What would normally pass for coincidence becomes something far stranger as the recently engaged Lola must contend not only with the viability of her current relationship but with the fact that both her best friend and her former boss, a magazine editor turned mystical guru, might have an unhealthy investment in the outcome. Memories of the past swirl and converge in ways both comic and eerie, as Lola is forced to decide if she will surrender herself to the conspiring of one very contemporary cult. Spoiler-Free Review: For Cult Classic’s Lola, signing a New York lease is commensurate with signing a custody agreement with millions of strangers to share the same handful of concrete—to negotiate terms for loving and leaving each other. Two things are integral to Cult Classic: New York and love. They work in tandem. There is no love for Lola without New York, and there is none of Lola’s New York without love. People around me love to talk about the “organ” of the city, the cacophony of jobs and cabs and lives that roar outside walk-up windows. Sloane Crosley captures all of this in fewer than 300 pages. Cult Classic is not one story but many; it covers the gamut of the different types of love that exist in the world, stretching from age 18 to age almost-40. Lola is not flawed because she has had so many relationships; she is all the better for it, and so are the many women in the world who share the same history. The novel is wonderful, strange, compassionate, and utterly charming. It is a novel for everyone, but especially for those who have ever doubted the existence of love in this modern age. (Click “Read More” for spoilers.)
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ReviewsCult Classic
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