Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley book review - Claim to enduring fame is just wishful thinking

A friend talks about the men she dates “as if they were lab rats, the way married people do, as if their life is the control and yours is the experiment”; the protagonist muses about how “the love lobby is worse than the gun lobby. More misery, more addiction, more heads on spikes.” But the story, such as it is, falls a bit flat.

Lola, an aimless but attractive journalist in her late thirties, is wandering around Manhattan when she bumps into an ex, triggering an extended jaunt down memory lane and a navel-gazing contemplation of her romantic journey until meeting her current paramour, Boots.

Then, it happens again; another brief encounter with an ex, and it keeps happening. Is the universe playing tricks? Well no, and yes, as it transpires that she is patient zero for a moneymaking experiment to do with the power of wishful thinking.

Yet this isn’t science fiction but a satirical comedy dressed up as a thriller, so the rest is largely a meander through her past relationships. Which, again, is fine — Crosley brings these erstwhile lovers to life with verve — but is diluted by Lola being a barely there sketch, primarily rendered through a string of failed affairs.

She works in a media start-up but we never really learn what drives her; she appears to have no financial worries, few friendships outside a toxic circle of ex-colleagues, and an entirely unremarkable family history.

She’s a cipher, in other words, for the author’s theories about love and life, and in truth I’d rather read a memoir about those subjects from Crosley, who is herself also a successful writer for Vanity Fair.

You won’t necessarily hate this, but by the time it comes together, it’s hard to feel invested in Lola’s fate. In truth, it’s self-indulgent; the kind of book that could only get published by a writer who once upon a time was herself destined to be a cult classic.