Kinflicks: 20th Anniversary Edition [Paperback]

Lisa Alther (Author, Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1996

In her first novel, Alther traces the troubled, funny, heartbreaking coming of age of Ginny Babcock Bliss during the l950s and '60s. The daughter of one of the first families in Hullsport, Tennessee, Ginny bounces from one identity to another, adopting the values, politics, lifestyle, even sexual orientation of each new partner. In "Kinflicks," Alther reels through the ups and downs of Ginny's life by dividing her narrative into two sequences: Ginny herself narrates the adventures of her past while a third-person narrator takes over to describe her present, when she returns to Hullsport as an adult to care for her dying mother. Mary Cantwell, writing in The New York Times Book Review, called "Kinflicks" "an almost flawless balance of light and dark, the skittery and the sad." "Ginny is the classic outsider, " noted the Saturday Review in a rave review of the book, "and her fine sense of the comic permits the novel to approach a kind of high seriousness...A best-seller? Sure. In the august company of "The Catcher in the Rye," "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and Huck? Yes, indeed."

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

An ambitious, funny, lucid, and unfailingly honest novel...No other writer has yet synthesized [the coming of age in the '60's] as well as Ms. Alther has.

Review

Amazing...a very funny book...about serious matters, full of people one would like to meet, and oddly invigorating. The tone of voice throughout is a tone that has been missing in American fiction for years -- the speech of breezy survivors, of Holden Caulfield, Augie March, and ultimately Huck Finn. -- John Leonard, New York Times Book Review, Mar.14, 1976

An extraordinary first novel.... Funny with the touchmark of acute, aching, poignant reality...the most marvelously described teens, adolescent mores and attitudes, sex and sensibilities since Salinger took us on Holden Caulfield's journey...Ginny is the classic outsider and her fine sense of the comic permits the novel to approach a kind of high seriousness...In the august company of The Catcher in the Rye, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Huck? Yes, indeed. -- Doris Grumbach, Saturday Review, Mar. 20, 1976

Composed of an adolescence of small-town suffocation, an education of Ivy League respectability, a dropout into lesbian communalism and then a copout into matrimonial conventionality, Ginny's life promises to be the progress of a 1960's pilgrim with all the resoluteness of a cork on a stormy ocean....At the very end, when Ginny at long last takes a serious stand, we not only respect her position but we also finally take seriously all the clowning that led up to it. And feel thankful to Lisa Alther for a rewarding reading experience. -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times,Mar.16,1976

I very much like this book, am sure Alther will be recognized as a strong, salty, original talent. Is the word I am looking for balanced? She does fuse qualities, being robustly despairing, tenaciously critical, yet vigorously creative, grim but comical -- she had me laughing at four in the morning. No man could have written it, but it is very far from being 'a woman's book', and it made me wonder what Tom Jones would be like, written now. It is the size and scope of the territory Alther claims which is impressive. -- Doris Lessing

So continuously funny that its wisdom takes you by surprise....We are in the presence of a most powerful and remarkable talent. -- Alice Adams, Harper's, May, 1976

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Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Plume; 1st Plume Edition edition (May 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452276772
• ISBN-13: 978-0452276772
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,408,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lisa Alther is the bestselling author of five novels, among them the critically acclaimed Kinflicks, and a family memoir, Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree. She was born in Kingsport, Tennessee, in 1944, one of five children in a close-knit family influenced by both its Southern and "Yankee" roots. After attending Wellesley College and working in book publishing, she moved to Vermont, where she began to write and raise her daughter. Alther currently divides her time among Tennessee, Vermont, and New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's Worth the Wait, March 27, 2001

By 

Allen Smalling "Constant Reader," (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kinflicks: 20th Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

Alther's literary creation is 'feminist' in the most salutory sense of the word, but it doesn't contain the mandatory man-bashing that became so common a few years later. Instead, Alther invokes an avalance of wit and sharp observation that will provoke a healthy nostalgia in the over-40s, a realistic warts-and-all view of that decade in the under-40s, and a pretty darn good look at that pivotal time for young adult readers who pick up the book. (Perhaps you know an older teen who's 'into' the 1960s?) The plot takes our (at least partly autobiographical) heroine from little 'Hullsport' (read: Kingsport) Tennessee Up North to a good college, and gets her into the Sixties just at the point they get hot, hot, hot. Of the many virtues of this novel, two stand out to me: (1) Alther narrates the story in a moderate point-of-view, avoiding the twin perils of getting too immersed in the subject or too distant and 'snooty'; and (2) related to this, her lead character's voice (which reflects her personality) is good, clear and steady, no whining here. Not to mention the fact that the book is witty as all get-out.

As you probably know by now, this kind of witty and zestful Baby Boomer's coming-of-age story is a glut on the literary market but in my opinion "Kinflicks" is *far* above the norm in quality. You probably already have your own favorite coming-of-age-in-the-Sixties novels; try "Kinflicks" and add another to your list.

PS: Oh, Mr. Publisher!! Have you noticed that eight of us or so have gone to the trouble to review "Kinflicks," even though it's difficult to find through normal distribution channels? How about a reprint? I don't think you'd regret doing so.

[e-mail]

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A '60's woman's search for identity, July 25, 2000

By 

Dianne Merridith - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kinflicks: 20th Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

Like many women of her generation (the 50s and 60s), Ginny Babcock is searching for her identity in an age when much is expected of women, but few opportunities and little direction is available. Being a wife and a mother is no longer the expected (and supposedly fulfilling) goal of all women of Ginny's generation, but what to choose instead . . .? Ginny tries a little bit of everything as she seeks for a role that thoroughly expresses her as a woman. Most of Ginny's experiments seem silly from the outside and end up as dissatisfactions and dead-ends, but often that's the only way we find our way through life. Counterposed with this is the lingering death of Ginny's mother and the struggle of the two women to bridge generational gap of two different generations and find some common ground. Ginny longs for some wisdom about life from her mother, but eventually sees that the only lesson available comes from simply living your life. I found this novel completely absorbing and sat up most of a night reading it. The relationship of Ginny and her mother touched a chord and has stayed with me.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A poignant moving novel, achingly real and humorous, December 11, 1999

By 

David Cohen (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kinflicks: 20th Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

Ginny Babcock is the ultimate slacker, years before it became fashionable, or worse yet a media term to wrap a journalistic flag around. This book follows Ginny's misadventures, recorded with wry accuracy by the protagonist. A woman who is very intelligent but unable to make a niche for herself. What makes it so poignant to watch as she careens around from role to role is the hard fact that her mother dies slowly and is unable to provide Ginny with any profound relevations as the turbelence in her life grows to epic proportions. With the conclusion, one gets a strong sense that Ginny eventually straightens herself out.