CULT CLASSIC

One idle weeknight in New York’s Chinatown, our heroine is at a reunion dinner with her former colleagues when she ducks out to buy cigarettes. On the 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 Lola must contend not only with the viability of her current relationship but the fact that both her best friend and former boss, a magazine editor-turned-mystical-guru, might have an acutely 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 buy into the tenets of romantic love, change who she is to do it and surrender herself to one very contemporary cult. Both suspenseful and delightfully funny, this new novel from Sloane Crosley combines the breathtaking twists and turns of a psychological thriller with the will-she-won't-she of a romantic comedy. Cult Classic is an original: a masterfully crafted, surrealist meditation on love in an age when the past is ever at your fingertips and sanity is for sale. With her gimlet eye, Crosley spins a wry romantic fantasy that is equal parts page-turner and poignant portrayal of alienation.