{{Short description|Novel by Lisa Alther}} {{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}} {{Infobox book | <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books --> | name = Kinflicks | title_orig = | translator = | image = File:Kinflicks.jpg | caption = First edition (US) | author = Lisa Alther | cover_artist = | country = United States | language = English | series = | genre = Novel | publisher = Knopf (US)<br>Chatto & Windus (UK) | release_date = 1976 | media_type = Print | pages = 503<ref name="time76"/> | isbn = 0-394-49836-4 | dewey = 813/.5/4 | congress = PZ4.A4674 Ki3 PS3551.L78 | oclc = 1958211 | preceded_by = | followed_by = Original Sins }} '''''Kinflicks''''' (1976) is a novel by American writer Lisa Alther. It was Alther's first published work, and the "subject of considerable pre-publication hyperbole."<ref name="time76"/>
==Plot summary== The novel starts with a first-person reflection on her life so far by the protagonist, Virginia "Ginny" Hull Babcock Bliss, as she catches a plane to look after her gravely ill mother. From then on, dated chapters in third person alternate with Ginny's non-linear first-person reminiscences of her childhood, her teenage years, her college years, her marriage, and beyond.
==Publication== The first printing consisted of 30,000 copies, and was chosen as an alternate selection of the Book of the Month Club.<ref name="time76">{{cite web| url= http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,911795,00.html | archive-url= https://archive.today/20130204092015/http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,911795,00.html | url-status= dead | archive-date= February 4, 2013 | title= Books: Blue Genes | date= March 22, 1976 | author= Paul Gray | publisher= Time| accessdate= 2010-09-29}}</ref> It was "the subject of considerable pre-publication hyperbole..., soaring in the slip stream of ''Fear of Flying'', Erica Jong's bestselling hymn to the body electric. The novel proves again—if any doubters still remain—that women can write about physical functions just as frankly and, when the genes move them, as raunchily as men. It strikes a blow for the picara by putting a heroine through the same paces that once animated a Tom Jones or a Holden Caulfield. And it suggests that life seen from what was once called the distaff side suspiciously resembles the genitalia-centered existence that male novelists have so long monopolized."<ref name="time76"/>
==Critical reception== Nobel laureate Doris Lessing wrote of ''Kinflicks'' that Alther was "a strong, salty, original talent."<ref name=FoylesCoUK_Reviews_DorisLessing_Kinflicks> {{cite web |url = http://www.foyles.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781860497094& |title = Kinflicks |publisher = Foyles |accessdate = 2009-01-03 }}{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} </ref>
''Time'' called it an "abundantly entertaining progress through the unsettled 60s" and noted that "as exuberant caricature ''Kinflicks'' is authentically inspired"; while the novel "teems with cartoon eccentrics mouthing balloonfuls of inflated nonsense[, u]nhappily, Ginny [the protagonist] is equally one dimensional."<ref name="time76"/>
More than 30 years after its publication, Katherine Dieckmann, reviewing the author's 2007 memoir, also commented on ''Kinflicks'', calling it a "raucous novel [that] was all the rage among my high school set for its lurid paperback cover (nude female back, gilt lettering) and its frank talk of erections and lesbian hook-ups. Revisiting the novel 30 years later, it’s clear the packaging sold the contents short: Alther’s best-known book is a witty coming-of-age tale in which a tart-tongued protagonist named Ginny wanders her way through an identity crisis, mostly against a classic counterculture background."<ref>{{cite web| url= https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/review/Dieckmann-t.html |title= Mountain People | date=May 13, 2007 | work= The New York Times | accessdate= 2010-09-29}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * [http://www.lisaalther.com/kinflicks.html ''Kinflicks''] from the author's official website * [http://jezebel.com/5256440/kinflicks-coming-to-rest Review] at Jezebel.com
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Category:Novels by Lisa Alther Category:Feminist literature Category:American LGBTQ novels Category:American picaresque novels Category:American bildungsromans Category:1976 American novels Category:1976 English-language novels Category:Alfred A. Knopf books Category:1976 debut novels Category:Novels about lesbian topics Category:1970s LGBTQ novels