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Cult of Loretta
“Kevin Maloney alchemizes the allure of dicey friendships, hallucinatory sex and a drug so terrifying I’m heartbroken I’ll never get to try it. Cult of Loretta captures the manic fury of Richard Brautigan writing a sequel to The Outsiders during a ketamine binge.”
- Jim Ruland, author of Forest of Fortune
“I haven’t read a book this great, this funny, this original, this emotional, this bonkers in quite some time. It’s a little like Bukowski and Sam Lipsyte and the drug scene in Beavis and Butthead Do America all smashed together, but also completely and totally Kevin Maloney.”
- Aaron Burch, author of Backswing
“Cult of Loretta is a hot dose of pleasure. It whistles with the wit of Brautigan, stings with the heart of badly dissolved romance. If a modern day mountain man came out of the wilderness with a story in his eye, this might be the thing he’d tell. Kevin Maloney is that kind of treasure–a wild thing that’s come in from the war of life, lived to tell the tale.”
- Brian Allen Carr, author of The Last Horror Novel in the History of the World
“Cult of Loretta is a book about a man named Nelson who gets his ass kicked over and over again by the world, and his heart pulverized over and over by the same enigmatic woman. It’s about what happens to love when both halves of a couple are whacked out on the most powerful drug of all time. It’s about the tragedies that parents can make for us, and the tragedies we make for ourselves. Kevin Maloney is an exceptional talent, someone capable of weaving all of these nasty little ingredients into something that is as tender as it is bleak, something that makes you laugh out loud as it rips open your skin and pulls out your veins.”
- Juliet Escoria, author of Black Cloud
“Kevin Maloney drags the lake of our subconscious, revealing the often startling but always mesmerizing grit that becomes human memory. Cult of Loretta is an impressive debut, a confident showcase of an exciting new literary talent.”
- Michael J Seidlinger, author of The Fun We’ve Had
- Jim Ruland, author of Forest of Fortune
“I haven’t read a book this great, this funny, this original, this emotional, this bonkers in quite some time. It’s a little like Bukowski and Sam Lipsyte and the drug scene in Beavis and Butthead Do America all smashed together, but also completely and totally Kevin Maloney.”
- Aaron Burch, author of Backswing
“Cult of Loretta is a hot dose of pleasure. It whistles with the wit of Brautigan, stings with the heart of badly dissolved romance. If a modern day mountain man came out of the wilderness with a story in his eye, this might be the thing he’d tell. Kevin Maloney is that kind of treasure–a wild thing that’s come in from the war of life, lived to tell the tale.”
- Brian Allen Carr, author of The Last Horror Novel in the History of the World
“Cult of Loretta is a book about a man named Nelson who gets his ass kicked over and over again by the world, and his heart pulverized over and over by the same enigmatic woman. It’s about what happens to love when both halves of a couple are whacked out on the most powerful drug of all time. It’s about the tragedies that parents can make for us, and the tragedies we make for ourselves. Kevin Maloney is an exceptional talent, someone capable of weaving all of these nasty little ingredients into something that is as tender as it is bleak, something that makes you laugh out loud as it rips open your skin and pulls out your veins.”
- Juliet Escoria, author of Black Cloud
“Kevin Maloney drags the lake of our subconscious, revealing the often startling but always mesmerizing grit that becomes human memory. Cult of Loretta is an impressive debut, a confident showcase of an exciting new literary talent.”
- Michael J Seidlinger, author of The Fun We’ve Had
146 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2015
10 people are currently reading
629 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Maloney
15 books98 followersKevin Maloney is the author of The Red-Headed Pilgrim (Two Dollar Radio, Jan 2023), Horse Girl Fever (CLASH Books, 2025), and Cult of Loretta (Lazy Fascist, 2015).
At times a TJ Maxx associate, grocery clerk, outdoor school instructor, organic farmer, electrician, high school English teacher, and teddy bear salesman, Kevin currently works as a web developer and writer. His stories have appeared in Hobart, Barrelhouse, Green Mountains Review, and a number of other journals and anthologies.
He lives in Portland, Oregon, five blocks from his very hot and talented fiancée Ryan-Ashley Anderson.
At times a TJ Maxx associate, grocery clerk, outdoor school instructor, organic farmer, electrician, high school English teacher, and teddy bear salesman, Kevin currently works as a web developer and writer. His stories have appeared in Hobart, Barrelhouse, Green Mountains Review, and a number of other journals and anthologies.
He lives in Portland, Oregon, five blocks from his very hot and talented fiancée Ryan-Ashley Anderson.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
May 23, 2018
This book will rake across your heart like a syringe digging for a vein. Lust, love and a profusion of drugs turn the search for warmth and marvel into a serrated instrument of pain, repeated until empty. Reclaiming the wayward past is forever impossible.
February 6, 2017
Often teetering on the precipice of self-indulgence, Cult of Loretta manages to eschew such a label by machine gunning us with profundity after profundity, both simple and complex, aimed right at the black heart of all existence. Love and friendship, growing up and death - in all of their nihilistic glory - analyzed and repurposed without any extra fluff. At 140 lean pages, this book never grows tiresome or repetitive (any longer at it might have). Perhaps I identify on a visceral level with the main character, which I’m sure somewhat colored my opinion of this book, but I really thought this novel was a home run. If you’re a dude in your 30s, this should be required reading.
August 16, 2015
Holy cowhide! This is one fun and wild (and sometimes disturbing) ride. Cult of Loretta combines a likable sad-sack narrative with early 90s Portland grunge-drug culture and the pain of romantic hearts that can't be tamed or understood. I loved all the Portland references throughout and I'd say that the mood of the book makes it feel like a strangely historical read. If I were to ever make a list of best books set in Portland (especially books that truly capture the oddness of our city) this would be near the top. Plus, it's funny as hell.
September 27, 2015
Here’s a novel that serves as an emotional time machine, and within its pages there is a “coming-of-age” tale that mirrors many of our own personal journeys. The “cult” in the title reminds of The End of the Affair, in which Graham Greene compared romantic love to a form of religious worship. If you mixed Graham Greene with Roberto Bolano’s “Savage Detectives,” you have a good idea what you might be getting into with this particular cult.
I never felt empathy for the protagonist or Loretta while reading, mostly because I could easily relate to the plot. The story resonated with me, and made me think about the whole “Mary Magdalene Syndrome” that a lot of men seem to exhibit, or perhaps secretly hope to overcome. Loretta is the girl who must be saved, but we must wonder if there is a way to save her or if she truly wants to become saved. Within the beating heart of the story, that is one of the underlying ideas that caused me to think about the sort of doomed romance that bloomed with Loretta’s cult. I read this book in one sitting, mostly because I wanted to know what it would take for some of my questions to be answered; to what lengths would Nelsen and Loretta drag their melodrama? How many ritual “sacrifices” would be made for Loretta? Is there a sort of psychopathic tendency in women like Loretta when it comes to love?
I needed to reflect after reading the book, mostly because it stuck with me for a bit and I wanted to keep reading after it was over. I think the book is very realistic and can’t go much further than it did; you are reading about a train wreck featuring a train that continues to get wrecked until there is nothing left. The book was beautifully written, but it may prove a bit depressing for anyone who might not be able to relate or perhaps they read this one in which similar wounds are still a bit fresh. For me, however, it was a refreshing way to think about “love” from a safe distance, and I think Nelsen would be able to agree.
I never felt empathy for the protagonist or Loretta while reading, mostly because I could easily relate to the plot. The story resonated with me, and made me think about the whole “Mary Magdalene Syndrome” that a lot of men seem to exhibit, or perhaps secretly hope to overcome. Loretta is the girl who must be saved, but we must wonder if there is a way to save her or if she truly wants to become saved. Within the beating heart of the story, that is one of the underlying ideas that caused me to think about the sort of doomed romance that bloomed with Loretta’s cult. I read this book in one sitting, mostly because I wanted to know what it would take for some of my questions to be answered; to what lengths would Nelsen and Loretta drag their melodrama? How many ritual “sacrifices” would be made for Loretta? Is there a sort of psychopathic tendency in women like Loretta when it comes to love?
I needed to reflect after reading the book, mostly because it stuck with me for a bit and I wanted to keep reading after it was over. I think the book is very realistic and can’t go much further than it did; you are reading about a train wreck featuring a train that continues to get wrecked until there is nothing left. The book was beautifully written, but it may prove a bit depressing for anyone who might not be able to relate or perhaps they read this one in which similar wounds are still a bit fresh. For me, however, it was a refreshing way to think about “love” from a safe distance, and I think Nelsen would be able to agree.
October 10, 2015
Crackling with powerful, Satanic energy, this book is a love story for the ages. It’s like Harry Met Sally except Harry listens to nu metal and Sally is possessed by Zuul from Ghostbusters, has an addiction to shitty speed, and may or may not be a juggalo. Maloney is dark, son.
July 4, 2018
This book is brilliant. I keep on thinking of weird scenarios, and I'm like, where did I see that? Only to realize I read it in this book. So yeah, I keep on thinking about it and have ever since I started reading it.
July 12, 2015
Cult Of Loretta is super fucking good. It haunts you. Anytime I had to put this book down, I would find myself itching to pick it up, wanting to know what happens to Loretta and the doomed men that keep falling in love with her. An otherwise ordinary girl who had the power to ruin even the best of friendships. A girl who makes Helen of Troy seem like a fucking amateur.
Maloney writes some damn good characters — broken people who accept that the world is awful and either embrace the path of slow self-destruction or stew in a growing bitterness.
“I saw who she actually was — an extremely angry woman in her mid-to-late 40s in a pantsuit from Nordstrom trying to control the chaos she saw everywhere in the world, mostly inside herself. I saw that she’d never be happy and that no one loved her and that no one would ever love her because she’d been broken a long time ago and that whatever was left of her just wanted to break the spirits of children making obscene gestures involving giant imaginary penises.”
The pain in the pages is real. Love is the worst drug there is (although screw sounds pretty damn awful, too). When you get hooked so bad you can’t think straight. Stupid shit you do or put up with because you think you found “the one.” But when you’ve been kicked down enough times and start to grow desensitized to the pain, it gets to a point where all you can do is laugh. Cult Of Loretta is a perfect example of a tragicomedy.
“Another night, we got so high I broke into our next door neighbor’s house and stole their television so we could watch The Simpsons. I asked Loretta where I should put it. She said on top of the TV, which is how we discovered that we already had a TV.”
This book blew me away. I hadn’t been this moved by a book since Juliet Escoria’s Black Cloud (Civil Coping Mechanisms). Maloney is a brand new force in the Indie Lit scene. Can’t wait to read more by him.
Maloney writes some damn good characters — broken people who accept that the world is awful and either embrace the path of slow self-destruction or stew in a growing bitterness.
“I saw who she actually was — an extremely angry woman in her mid-to-late 40s in a pantsuit from Nordstrom trying to control the chaos she saw everywhere in the world, mostly inside herself. I saw that she’d never be happy and that no one loved her and that no one would ever love her because she’d been broken a long time ago and that whatever was left of her just wanted to break the spirits of children making obscene gestures involving giant imaginary penises.”
The pain in the pages is real. Love is the worst drug there is (although screw sounds pretty damn awful, too). When you get hooked so bad you can’t think straight. Stupid shit you do or put up with because you think you found “the one.” But when you’ve been kicked down enough times and start to grow desensitized to the pain, it gets to a point where all you can do is laugh. Cult Of Loretta is a perfect example of a tragicomedy.
“Another night, we got so high I broke into our next door neighbor’s house and stole their television so we could watch The Simpsons. I asked Loretta where I should put it. She said on top of the TV, which is how we discovered that we already had a TV.”
This book blew me away. I hadn’t been this moved by a book since Juliet Escoria’s Black Cloud (Civil Coping Mechanisms). Maloney is a brand new force in the Indie Lit scene. Can’t wait to read more by him.
November 12, 2015
What an unexpected little gem. CULT OF LORETTA was sent to me by its publisher as a throw-in alongside another novel I had actually requested and now that I've read it I understand why. This little tome needs to be in more people's hands. It's a book that has a target audience of adult mean, I believe, because its a novel about how first love shapes a young man's live and how selfish young love can be.
CULT OF LORETTA is endearing because it's about a boy like I used to be (up to the part where they're getting into intravenous drugs, I guess), so it's as close as I will feel to being nostalgic when reading a novel. Kevin Maloney's kaleidoscopic vision and blossoming language kept me through the most abstract part even when I thought it was getting bleak for the sake of being bleak. CULT OF LORETTA is solid literature. Speaks of things we all go through but never deem worthy to share with anybody.
CULT OF LORETTA is endearing because it's about a boy like I used to be (up to the part where they're getting into intravenous drugs, I guess), so it's as close as I will feel to being nostalgic when reading a novel. Kevin Maloney's kaleidoscopic vision and blossoming language kept me through the most abstract part even when I thought it was getting bleak for the sake of being bleak. CULT OF LORETTA is solid literature. Speaks of things we all go through but never deem worthy to share with anybody.
June 11, 2015
Beautiful language + absurd Joseph Heller-isms + touches of The Virgin Suicides-esque obsession (my current literary obsession) = Cult of Loretta. But these are all jump-offs, cuz this book is wholly original. Unlike anything I've ever read, really. Blew through it in one sitting and lol'd on just about every page. Hard to imagine a book that will beat this as my favorite of 2015.
September 28, 2015
This is one of my favorite books I've read this year -- when I finished reading it the first time, I flipped right back to the beginning and read it again. The sentences are expertly polished, visionary, and full of insane twists and black humor that will keep you flipping pages at a methamphetamine pace. This novel is crazy and dreamy and transgressive in the best possible way.
June 11, 2015
I knew a girl like Loretta years and years and years ago.
I probably thought I loved her. But I was too young and dumb and fucked up to really know what that means.
She's most likely dead now.
I probably thought I loved her. But I was too young and dumb and fucked up to really know what that means.
She's most likely dead now.
June 16, 2020
I used to really enjoy "Bizarro horror", the type of stuff I used to absolutely adore but I think I've kinda grown out. Actually, I know I've grown out of it, but everyone was telling me how great Cult of Loretta was fantastic so I decided to give it a try.
Sadly, Cult of Loretta get's a 1.5 from me. Thought the prose was boring, and Nelson's 'revelations' to be kinda fake-deep. The only part I did like was the bits about fatherhood, you can tell Maloney is a father himself, but that's really it.
Note: I'm including Cult of Loretta as Bizarro Horror as that's typically what Lazy Fascist publishes, and that seems to be the general aesthetic of Maloney's other works.
March 13, 2016
Fast-paced, and hallucinatory. An infatuation fueled roller coaster of a love and coming of age story.
December 30, 2017
Amazon has been recommending this book to me for a while now, but I just got around to reading it. Wow. I’d been missing out. Cult of Loretta is just incredible. The writing is beautiful, deceptively simple yet poetic. It reminded me of Bukowski, Denis Johnson or Justin Grimbol. The chapters are short and sweet, full of emotion, and always left me wanting to read another chapter or two or five.
The story itself revolves around the narrator’s love of the titular Loretta. She’s a real powderkeg. They make love. They do drugs. She breaks his heart. He keeps coming back for more.
I’ve loved a Loretta. I felt the narrator’s joy and pain on every page. This book should still make you feel the feels even if you’ve never had the misfortune/pleasure of being in a Cult of Loretta.
The story itself revolves around the narrator’s love of the titular Loretta. She’s a real powderkeg. They make love. They do drugs. She breaks his heart. He keeps coming back for more.
I’ve loved a Loretta. I felt the narrator’s joy and pain on every page. This book should still make you feel the feels even if you’ve never had the misfortune/pleasure of being in a Cult of Loretta.
June 28, 2018
This review is not a reflection on the personal character of the author, who I met and spoke with briefly. He was an agreeable guy. My thoughts on this book have to do with my growing disappointment that the types of characters represented in this work have come to represent an entire generation of losers, misfits of the worst variety who can't handle their drugs, can't handle their emotions, can't handle their jobs and can't handle their own reproductive and/or familial responsibilities. Loretta is the typical manic pixie girl with a dash of Courtney Love-like vapidity thrown in for good measure. I imagine the reason this book resonates so well with the Portland crowd is that it glorifies bad parenthood and self destruction as a religion. All of this is not to say that this book was particularly uninteresting at times, but the message weighs down any redeeming intrigue for this reader. Also, if you want to read a book that tackles these same themes and lifestyles but in a far more coherent manner, I highly recommend F250 by Bud Smith.
February 11, 2016
So much of the literature that I fell in love with when I first started reading--Bukowski and Brautigan, especially--has fallen out of vogue in the last decade. Readers are seldom interested in stories of poor people who aren't saps but who do have artistic insights. Cult of Loretta is inspired by that tradition and mixes it well with nods to Denis Johnson and Arthur Bradford and Kevin Maloney's own weird and wonderful talent to make a darkly hilarious book about bad drugs, bad sex, and bad love as way to enlightenment. The sentences pop off the page and the story runs through walls. Even when the moments lapse into absurdity, Maloney keeps the narrative and characters as realistic as garden gnomes propped on someone's front porch. A great coming-of-age book that crushes up most coming-of-age stories and ends up knee-deep in your mom's vagina. Great stuff.
October 12, 2015
So beautifully brilliant. I've been overly sentimental lately anyway, and Kevin Maloney made me even worse by reminding me what it was like to live in Portland in the nineties. I fucking loved this book.
November 5, 2015
Oh... my god.
This little book floored me.
Not sure what else to say. It hurt. In the best way.
This little book floored me.
Not sure what else to say. It hurt. In the best way.
December 3, 2016
I've read this book three times! Incredible.
April 29, 2023
I wrote this book and I think it’s amazing.
May 5, 2017
I was well on my way to giving this 5 stars, but the last 20 pages were a little unsatisfying. The ending seemed a little hurried, and lacking some of the uncomfortable humor that had me laughing out loud earlier.
December 8, 2023
What is it about Portland that churns out authors with such deranged minds? This author joins the likes of Katherine Dunn and Chucky P in coming up with a disturbing tale of obsessive love with a bit of non-Portland Danny Boyle thrown in for good measure (though this baby is strapped in a car seat, not creepily roaming the ceiling).
August 10, 2020
Highly recommend this crazy trip.
February 26, 2024
“If his hatred was a well, I’d be at the bottom of it in an inch of water, shivering, cold, in a pile of dimes”
December 30, 2017
'Cult of Loretta' reads like a tribute to both the Northwest and lost love. There were several times I chuckled out loud, only then to think 'fuck, that's dark!' Maloney has a storyteller's voice, much in the same way as Joe Lansdale. This is stunning.
August 23, 2025
Druggy, daft, exuberant.
February 16, 2016
Tiny, sharp, and beautiful, like a paring knife inlaid with the golden words of a one-eyed madman who's really into Alice in Chains. Filled with comedic absurdity, transcendent sentences and the pacing of Palahniuk novel in a stolen Ford Bronco fleeing the scene. Centering around the titular Loretta and a narrator who knows better but can't stop himself, the reader is flung along with every purely physical desire fulfilled at the cost of health, wealth, and sanity. Framed with familiar tinges of 90's nostalgia, the clipped chapters are short but packed with a beautiful punch; reminiscent of Scott McClanahan and resembling a left hook from the bedazzled fist of a trailer park queen. For all the jerky twists and turns, from enlightenment to insanity, "Cult of Loretta" could be its own sketchy carnival ride, leaving you breathless, terrified, and pumped to go again.
December 28, 2015
Months later, an image of Loretta haunts you, even if the story is horrible. I bought this not knowing it was smut. My purchase was based on the praises for the writing, so I stuck with it because of that. I wish the title character was more developed. It was well-written and the opening was engaging, but we never get a strong motivation for the way Loretta is. We know about her home life, but it's not a nuanced look, so she becomes the stereotypical manic pixie to be lusted after no matter what. It's certainly a story that sticks with you, but I wish Loretta wasn't so hallow, even if she might be a metaphor.
July 13, 2015
Brilliant novel--it blew me away. Terrifying, fast-paced, erudite, gleefully scatalogical, with a genuine voice. It alters your consciousness like a drug. I could not put it down--I bought it and started it the same day and read the last half at breakneck speed parked in the parking lot at Burgerville in Centralia, WA. It would be a dark book except it's constantly hilarious. Just when you think Maloney will preach or take the easy way out, things get ambivalent and unpredictable. It left me feeling honest, inspired, nostalgic, and vaguely poetical.
March 10, 2016
This book was a punch in the throat of my nostalgia for the mid 90s in Portland. The only thing it was missing was watching Tommy break up a fight between methed out bicycle messengers at the Vern. It also has the best sentence that sums up the way I've felt about Pdx's popularity since forever. Watching Elliot Smith perform at the Oscars the protagonist says, "I think that's the guy from Heatmiser." That feeling of shock, discomfort, and dislocation is what I feel life's been like ever since.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews