Loose Girl

February 11, 2008
Despite the rather prurient title, Cohen's memoir is a deeply poignant, desperately sad account of a confused, directionless adolescent girl's free fall into self-abnegation. Growing up affluent in New Jersey in the 1980s and smarting from the recent breakup of her parents, 11-year-old Cohen begins to recognize the power her nubile body has over men. Being wanted becomes her greatest hope; once she and her older sister, Tyler, begin living with her father when her mother decides to attend med school in the Philippines, she latches onto other girls with whom she treks into New York City to bar hop at places like Dorian's Red Hand and pick up older, eager boys. Stunningly, the father is not alarmed by her early-morning absences, but seems to encourage her popularity, buying her clothes and treating her as a grownup. Gradually, hooking up with boys becomes a need, a way to bolster her faltering sense of self-worth. A litany of dreary sex acts follows with young men she doesn't particularly like and who don't like her, regardless of STD scares and a college rape. The painter mother of one of her boyfriends does initiate her into more intellectual pursuits, awakening a redemptive desire to become a writer. Cohen's memoir of a lost childhood is commendably honest and frequently excruciating to read.

April 1, 2008
This is a brutally honest memoir by a woman who discovered at age 11 what it feels like to be noticednot as a cute preteen but as an alluring sex object. From then on, Cohen sought out sexual partnersmore than 40 of them over a dozen years. Growing up in northern New Jersey, Cohen and her best friends began hooking up with guys at friends' apartments in New York when their parents were out. When her mother entered medical school in the Philippines, all parental supervision seems to have goneuntil her father returned to assume some of his duties. But, anxious to be cool with his daughters' friends, he smoked pot with them and encouraged their sexual pursuits. Cohen headed to Massachusetts for college, only a half day's drive from partners and pot in New York. Then, for the next 15 years and 225 pages, Cohen hops from place to place, always finding men to sleep with, desperate to feel loved, addicted to her power over men, losing herself in need. Cohen is not proud of her pastshe says she is disgustedbut this memoir gives readers a forthright look at the addiction of promiscuity. Highly recommended.Linda Beck, Indian Valley P.L., Telford, PA

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2008
If youve grown up in a family inept at sharing emotions, sustaining loving relationships can be an impossiblefeat. NewYorkerCohen learned little about love or self-esteem from her wealthy, divorced, and permissiveparentswhom she gently portrays as self-absorbed, indulgent, and ineffectualbut she did discover that holding a boys attention satisfied her terrible need for validation, however briefly. And so throughout high school and college, Cohen obsessively played the risky game ofseduction and casual, even contemptuous, unsafe, and nonconsensualsex. As with all addictions, the crash was far greater than the rush. Cohen fictionalized the promiscuity syndrome in a young adult novel, Easy (2006), and now compulsively recounts her own wrenching experiences and eventual success in kicking this destructivehabit.Her chronicle of dangerous sex and failed relationships is painfully honest, the psychology of her insights covertly sophisticated. Her candor may help under-21 readers steer clear of the whole mess, while those who survived similar ordeals will appreciate her tale of survival, and yet others will acquire understanding of young women under a similar dark spell.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)

August 25, 2008
Half NPR announcer, half phone-sex operator, Cynthia Holloway treats Cohen’s memoir of youthful sexuality and familial disarray with a mixture of breathless eroticism and This American Life
deadpan. In either style, Holloway reads intimately, drawing in listeners with her breathy, close-miked voice. There is something icky and quasi-pornographic about having the details of real-life teenage sexuality shared so familiarly, but Holloway’s voice—knowing, lightly ironic, capable of sounding adolescent while remaining firmly adult—salvages the situation. Like those NPR voices, Holloway maintains a crucial distance from the story she shares, immersing herself in the tangled folds of adolescent confusion while indicating, ever so subtly, her separation from it. A Hyperion hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 11).