Lisa Alther (1) (1944–)

“Kinflicks” by Lisa Alther has been one of my favorite books for nearly thirty years. It is a brilliant piece of ‘chick lit’ that predated the genre by a couple of decades.

This is the story of Ginny Babcock. Well, at least the story of Ginny as she pushes and pulls herself through the maze of everyone else’s desires and expectations.

She starts out, as most girls do, as daddy’s princess. Alas, puberty hits, and armed with a ponytail and padded bra, Ginny becomes the perky flag show more swinger and arm candy of the local football star. However, his relentless sexual pressure and just general dumbness start to cool Ginny’s ardor, until her father forbids her to see him. So, in best Romeo and Juliet fashion, she demands they run off and get married. Then fails to show at the appointed time. Enter Clem Cloyd, former childhood playmate and now the town’s motorcycle thug. It is love at first sight. Until he nearly kills her. Daddy to the rescue again and Ginny is bundled off to an exclusive girl’s college where she develops an intensely romantic, yet celibate, attachment to a female professor. Unable to maintain the rigidity of this relationship, she is seduced and swept off her feet by a lesbian neighbor in her dorm.

Get the picture? Every action in Ginny’s life has been dictated by who was lusting after her at the moment.

After the dramatic end to the lesbian love of her life, Ginny succumbs to a whirlwind courtship and marriage to the town’s insurance salesman. A nice guy, but Ira Bliss is nothing if not predictable. Ginny tries motherhood to alleviate her gnawing boredom and after her delusions are dashed, tries a transcendental affair with an disillusioned (and freaking crazy) wandering Vietnam veteran. Given Ginny’s track record, care to guess how well this worked out? C’mon, take a guess . . .

Did I mention that while this story is spinning out in retrospect, Ginny is at the bedside of her dying mother? Her source of angst and the rock against which she has always rebelled is slipping from this world. As Ginny watches her weaken we realize that everyone who has ever defined Ginny - her father, her mother, her lovers, her mentors, her husband - are gone. They have moved on with their own fates. For the first time in her life, Ginny has no one to tell her who to be. She realizes that in the end and is at first empty and then bereft. The silence is deafening.

Why readers should read this book:

“Kinflicks” is hilarious. It is so far beyond hilarious that it will take the light from hilarious ten thousand years to reach it. Lisa Alther has a brilliant grasp of satire, irony, humor, and the absurd. The insights into sex, romance, and suicide are blistering and ironic. And funny. Always funny. There is a fair sprinkling of explicit sex in the book, both straight and gay. However, this book is not erotica. It is always awkward, geeky, inappropriate, and painfully absurd. So suspend your prudishness and your lasciviousness and check out one of the best books in the last thirty years.

Why writers should read this book:

Did I mention that this novel is funny? A brilliant model of how to write and present satirical and ironic humor. Alther has a way with words and can turn a phrase with the best of them. Technically, the book is written in alternating POV. The retrospective chapters are third-person and the real time current chapters are first person. Technically the book is perfect. She moves between past and present with ease and there is never any confusion about where you are in Ginny’s life. Alther also is a master at making sex scenes not sexy. They are funny, awkward, absurd and usually quite embarrassing. Nothing titillating here. However, it all rings through as raw, thought provoking and, most of all, honest. Check it out! show less

'Once again I was shamelessly allowing myself to be defined by another person'

Ginny Babcock is called back to Tennessee, where her mother lies seriously ill with a blood clotting disorder. In alternate chapters, we follow her emotions - and her mother's.
In between, Ginny narrates the course her life has taken. Her days as a cheerleader, and first romance with footballer Joe Bob:
'Joe Bob didn't talk much. He preferred to be known by his actions. But when he did talk, his voice was soft and show more babyish; he would grin and open his mouth much wider than necessary and make flapping sounds...His favorite expression, and hence the favorite expression of the entire school, was "Do whut?" '
Then her fling with hoodlum Clem; going away to college and studying philosophy with Miss Head, before dropping out with lesbian lover Eddie, and going off to live in a hippy commune in the wonderfully named Stark's Bog, Vermont, where 'the house looked like Coney Island the day after the Fourth of July'. And finally 'married bliss' and motherhood...and an encounter with army deserter Hawk...
It's very wittily written, but with a sad sub-text...lots of sex but by no means all successful. As Ginny observes 'my tutoring anyone in lovemaking would be like Helen Keller's conducting bird watches.' Highly enjoyable. show less

A great little book that really is a lively, often funny, back-and-forth conversation between these two intelligent, artistic women: writer Lisa Alther and painter Francoise Gilot. A step back while reading it allowed me the pleasure of pondering what an amazing life Gilot has led, starting in France and ending up in NYC.

She is definitely worth getting to know. I recommend this charming book, and also Life With Picasso, which ends up being more about herself and her growth as a young woman show more and artist in her own right, while in a complicated relationship with a famous artist.

Francoise Gilot should be right up there on a list of every strong, intelligent, talented woman you could name. show less

....woman searches for her DNA ancestry in Appalachia and discovers roots to Portugal, Jewish, Native American heritage - which is not expected since her family culturally identify as Scottish protestant.

I love the way this is written and the humor. It reads so quickly and comes across as an honest re-telling of her experience at each step of the way. It helps me to find surprises and interesting turns in my own DNA ancestry - and that there is no need to try and figure out "how" or "why" show more information got lost...just focus on your own findings and mostly this brings joy and satisfaction.

And for Lisa Alther -a book!

I initially picked up this book because there was a review by Doris Lessing and so I knew it had to be good. I was concerned about reading a memoir that was going to drag me into the mud of someone else's confusion (claiming universal insight along the way); but nope! This was enjoyable, fun, and i definitely recommend to others to read this book. show less