Terminal Velocity

by Blanche McCrary Boyd

Book Overview

Can a nice plantation-bred Southern girl find her destiny as a radical lesbian and sometime fugitive? Well, yes, if the girl is Ellen Burns and the author is Blanche McCrary Boyd. In this wickedly transgressive new novel, Boyd follows the heroine of 'The Revolution of Little Girls' through the warped looking glass of the 1970s, when every orgasm was a political statement and heterosexuality could be termed an act of war.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679750320
• ISBN13: 9780679750321
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Exceptional

"Terminal Velocity" is a brilliant mix...hysterical lines, precocious characters, soul wrenching emotions. I've read it at least 5 times, and I have never had a book affect me so deeply. The truth in the plot and experiences becomes evident through eloquent writing, unbelievable experiences, and almost tangible characters. And beyond all that, the book has the capability to make one feel as if the author is actually intending to bring out your deepest desires and strongest fears! Unforgettable book, to say the least.

Makes Thelma & Louise look like Charlie's Angels

As far as I can see, this is the by far best novella about feminism/lesbianism/roughing it that I have ever had the pleasure to read. I stumbled across it in a bookstore (no, really, I tripped and fell on it) and started reading that very moment. I had the paperback, which, in my opinion, had a better cover than that of the hadcover. It took me all of an hour to finish Terminal Velocity. Ms. Boyd was really on to something when she wrote this novella. My favorite scene was the Tree of Life on the hotel floor. If I may be so proud, I'd say to any and all (lest the faint-of-heart swoon dead away) Read This Book.

The book I'm sending to everyone I know

Maybe the book gets a little bogged down at the end, but this story would not let me go. I read it all in a day and couldn't get it out of my head. I even fell in love with a character (Artemis). It's hilarious and it has scenes you'll want to read again and again

Feminist-bent risk-takers will relish...

"Terminal Velocity" makes good on its title. From page one to finish, McCrary Boyd hauls you from Boston to hell and back, relenting only during gear shifts, when her main character Ellen Larraine (a.k.a. Rain, Evelyn) waxes lesbo-profound, blacks out on drugs or engages in spiritual sex with her cohorts, all of them as extreme, confused and real (well, surreal) as herself, if not as crazy. These ladies' ballsy sex and lawlessness outdo what derelictions we see these days, and possibly any that ever occurred among feminist extremists in the late 60s and 70s. But their dialogue falls weary, especially towards the end, when Ellen (back to her real name) finds AA and God. Perhaps meant to be self-mocking, the characters in "Terminal Velocity" coin empty truisms like, "Language is just a way to move your mouth," which McCrary Boyd uses to punctuate the plot. These phrases annoy, but highlight the futility of the whole revolutionary shebang... In spite of all the warring with society, each other and their own inner selves, intended to settle some score, the women bleed relationships, kill marriages, chase their children to religion and dizzy themselves for life. Constant in its painfully lucid account of tripping--of every kind--Terminal Velocity is great to read. Just don't read it with a hangover