“Maybe it's transsexual Ovidian
Metamorphoses: a voice that always has a cock or pussy at just the right moment for the story, whether that consists of a dog-human chimera emerging from a terrible car accident, a witch turning a man into underwear, a lesbian tryst with a softball player, an after-workout blowjob, a poppers PSA, a frat hazing, and so on.” —
Coco Klockner, The Whitney Review
"[A] virtuosic deployment of first-person narrative and literary craftsmanship. . . That it’s funny almost hides that it’s impressive, that we’ve gone from autofiction dupe to gory slapstick to mangled symbology." —Charlie Markbreiter, 4Columns
"Sex Goblin asserts the importance of individual experience apart from its larger, societal context... Cook encourages us to stand shamelessly alone, owning whatever is wild and dull and stupid about us." —Gianni Washington, The Chicago Review of Books
"Lauren Cook’s Sex Goblin, newly out from Nightboat Books, slingshots readers between surreal scenes, diaristic musings, list poems and even a writing prompt. As genres shapeshift and merge, so too do bodies—most memorably when a childhood trauma literally bonds a character to a toy poodle." —Cassie Packard, Frieze
"The characters in Sex Goblin occupy a Tumblr-style register, mixing ha-ha irony with a profound sensitivity and warmth. He writes with a sense of wonder, introspection and sadness about nature, relationships and love." —Thea McLachlan, Xtra Magazine
"A lustrous alternative to the doomscroll. . . polyvocal, poly-corporeal, and full of moving, quiet optimism." —Oil Peters, Heavy Feather Review
“It’s not often a book entertains as easily as Sex Goblin does while simultaneously speaking to the monstrousness of being in a body at all.” —Mathuson Anthony, Book Club Bar
"The knife’s edge of sex and violence, comedy and profoundly blunt misery, mania and self-loathing, reduced into book form.” —Natalie Marlin, Moon Palace Books
