Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity [Paperback]

I probably had no business reading this book. I'm a 20 year old guy, and Cohen's new memoir has been clearly targeted towards women, specifically young girls still coming of age. When I was buying it, the lady at the Borders cash register gave me one of the strangest looks I have ever seen. I tried to explain. It was recommended to me by a friend, so I figured it would be an interesting read. I'd just sell it back on Amazon after I was done.

All that being said, there is no way I am selling this book.

We have all seen those girls at bars and parties, the ones who flaunt themselves around. The ones everybody calls whores and sluts. Maybe you look at them with disgust. Maybe with pity or empathy. Maybe, if you're like one of the guys in Cohen's story, you look at them with lust. Whatever it is you think when you see a promiscuous girl, this book will change your mind forever.

Loose Girl holds nothing back. Cohen writes about her journey with heart-breaking honesty and detail that will make you cringe. The recount of sexual incidents during her childhood and adolescence is melancholy and at times very disturbing. As she continues on through high school and college, making the same mistakes over and over, the story becomes downright agonizing. The last section reads like day turning from afternoon to dusk, or perhaps late night becoming dawn. Every chapter holds new truths. She answers questions that can't be answered--questions about why we are the way we are, what it means to love and be loved. There is a part where she realizes "Not being able to live without someone is not love. It's need." Quotes like this make the book unforgettable.

In the process of writing and publishing her memoir, Cohen has taken a lot of unwarranted criticism. She's been called an attention-whore and a slut. But the truth is, Loose Girl isn't really about any of that. It's about identity. Kerry's sexual promiscuity could have been anything. It could have been alcohol, drugs, religion, or whatever else people let get in their way of creating their art and their life. Kerry's favorite quote is by Mary Oliver: "Tell me, what will you do with your one wild and precious life?" In telling her chaotic story, she's not begging for attention to her life, she's helping us figure out ours. The writing truly touches on all fronts, it would be a huge mistake to assume otherwise.

This is a life-changing memoir that you'll want to read over and over. Here's to hoping Kerry Cohen will ignore the critics and keep up her incredible writing.

To be honest, I also could not put this book down once I started reading it. From a purely user-friendly perspective, it's a simple, quick read. No sophistication here at all, and in this case, it's a good thing so that one really absorbs the story. Also, I too, like so many others who have already read this book, can identify in a very personal way with Kerry's experiences...the degradation, denial, and self-loathing that comes from desperately trying to find love and feel loved at any cost. This "theme" is nothing new to most women who grew up in a post-Watergate or Generation X time period, whether experienced first-hand or through movies and literature of the time.

HOWEVER, to describe this book as a story of "finding her way toward real intimacy" (from the front cover flap) and "a model for recovery and real love" (review on back flap cover) is to totally mislead. Nothing could be further from the truth! Kerry is still sleeping with nameless, faceless men right up until the end, when she meets her husband-to-be, Michael. Who she then is engaged to within a period of 8 months. THIS is recovery? I don't think so. In fact, on Kerry's website, she states that she still struggles with some of the indentfied issues in the book.

I'm not trying to knock Cohen down as an author or a person. However, saying that you've been healed/recovered simply because you finally got married is akin to saying that you've conquered alcoholism simply because you stopped physically drinking alcohol. But there's more to it (anyone hear of a "dry drunk"?) and we all know it. The likely truth is that Kerry has been healed by the actual WRITING of this book, and good for her. But if anyone thinks this book offers any insight as to how she decided to stop sleeping with every guy she encountered, forget it. It's not there. Choose to enjoy this book only as a launch-point in thinking about and analyzing your own similar experiences.

Loose Girl is a well focused look at one woman's journey through insecurity, dysfunction and unhappiness. It reads a lot like many other 'addiction' books but since the 'addiction' it covers is sex, the highs and lows are a lot less extreme. Author Kerry Cohen does a good job of drawing the reader in and
creating a very vivid and engaging world. Her writing is clear, flowing and polished. I found myself zipping through the book fully engaged with Cohen's journey. My biggest gripe is that the book has almost no third act. Cohen's story has a very distinct beginning, middle, but a very soft end. I felt there was more book in Cohen and she stopped short of where the story could have taken her. The writer's Bio indicates that Cohen is now married with children, but the book never really ventures into how her past has shaped her present or now how reflecting on all this has impacted her as she moves forward. Even with a less than full ending, I still did like Loose Girl, it's well written, engaging and worth reading especially for fans of the genre.