Horse Girl Fever: Stories

by Kevin Maloney

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781960988362
Publisher:	CLASH Books
Publication date:	01/07/2025
Pages:	146
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 4.90(h) x 0.40(d)

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.

Editorial Reviews

08/12/2024

Lonely men drift toward disaster in this spirited and drug-fueled collection from Maloney (Red-Headed Pilgrim) set in and around Portland, Ore. The spare opener, “Ghost,” evokes Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son; the lovesick 40-year-old narrator meets a saintly bartender, hitches a ride on the back of a stranger’s bike to a Halloween party, snorts coke, “watche a thousand white butterflies migrate across a memory from my childhood,” then weeps for his life. The narrator of the title story recalls his glory days selling cocaine in high school (“I was the Pablo Escobar of Beaverton”), and his long-running fascination with classmate Gina. When Gina, at 17, calls the narrator looking for weed, he pushes coke on her and then holds her all night. Years later, in the present, he hears Gina almost died from a heroin overdose and remembers how he once “rooted for her in the dark like a child after a night of bad dreams.” In “End Times, Charleston Avenue,” set during the Covid-19 lockdown, a couple hosts a rowdy “backyard social distance hangout.” The next morning, during the hungover narrator’s remote work shift, he hopes there isn’t vomit in his beard. 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. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"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

"Maloney is among the most endearing, downright enjoyable voices in American indie lit writing today." —The Winnipeg Free Press

"A seizing sexworker, gay Abe Lincoln, the titular 'Horse Girl'—this cast of characters navigate the cruel realities of human experience with resilience, tenderness & humor. A collection that is a testament to Maloney's voice and his ability to find beauty anywhere, even Portland." —Madeline Cash, author of Earth Angel and Lost Lambs forthcoming from FSG

"There's a line in one of the stories from Kevin Maloney's absolutely fantastic collection Horse Girl Fever that perfectly encapsulates the experience of reading them. A character states, 'I've never felt so good in my life even though I keep choking on my own blood.' The stories are populated with characters who hold onto the insane joy and utter terror of being alive. Hysterical and honest, Maloney is a writer of unmatched energy, truly boundless in his abilities." —Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here and Now Is Not the Time to Panic

"Kevin Maloney is a natural born fabulist of the highest order and a fierce champion of the American scumbag. Horse Girl Fever is an all-bangers no-skips, amps-to-eleven collection." —Kyle Seibel, author of Hey You Assholes

"Kevin Maloney is iconic—one of the funniest, wittiest, and most tender authors working—and Horse Girl Fever is a delightful trip through his high-altitude mind. Each story is a brilliant journey, from cover to cover." —Brian Allen Carr, author of Opioid, Indiana and Bad Foundations

"A good alternate title for this collection would be Fear and Loathing in Portland, Oregon. Through his stories, Maloney expertly weaves a drug rug of what dreams should be: love-soaked, high-velocity, and utterly deranged." —Shy Watson, author of Horror Vacui and Cheap Yellow

“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

From the Publisher