Synopses & Reviews
Horse Girl Fever is a hilariously weird collection, part autofiction, part outlandish daydream, that celebrates the horse girl within all of us.
From cult author of The Red-Headed Pilgrim, Kevin Maloney delivers a vision of the world that is hysterical, terrifying, and true. A cuckolded husband finds a new identity as a ghost. A homeowner has a nervous breakdown while building a pergola. An angst-ridden teenager finds his spiritual equal in the mosh pit of an Alice in Chains concert.
In fourteen brutally funny stories, Horse Girl Fever plunges the reader into a world of misfits — inept drug smugglers, tattooed office workers, and philosophical strip club bouncers — who fumble toward the light but often end up flailing. Maloney’s writing conjures a dazzling spectrum of pain, joy, and humanity, peeking into the darkest corners of reality while high on Whippets.
Review
"Maloney is at his best with the gut-punch endings, which convey the characters’ desire for transcendence from their dingy lives. Though often sobering, these stories are great fun.” —Publishers Weekly
“Every new literary generation needs its drug warrior priest, and Kevin Maloney takes up that mantle with a baffled grin and abundant charisma. These stories had me chuckling in slack-jawed awe at the misery and beauty of life. Maloney is a rare talent, and we are lucky to have him.” —Colin Winnette, author of Users
"Horse Girl Fever had me whiplashed between unfathomable lows and the most hilariously inane highs that both satirize and empathize with what it's like being the worst person in the room at any Portland, Oregon house party. Sentence to sentence, I thought, 'Maloney can't be serious.' But that's the best part about these stories — he was, I was right there alongside each narrator, from coke-fueled binges to following pretty girls into the jungle. Self-deprecating and incisingly smart, this book burns like an improperly placed bottle rocket." —Elle Nash, author of Deliver Me and Animals Eat Each Other
About the Author
Kevin Maloney is the author of The Red-Headed Pilgrim and Cult of Loretta. His fiction has appeared in FENCE, Barrelhouse, Rejection Letters, HAD, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon.