Speedboat [Renata Adler]

[Classic] [New York] [GOAT]

Speedboat

Renata Adler

Vintage Books, NY. 1984. First vintage paperback edition. Slight, uniform yellowing throughout.Pristine otherwise, an excellent copy of an attractive edition.

From the publisher:

"When Speedboat burst on the scene in the late ’70s it was like nothing readers had encountered before. It seemed to disregard the rules of the novel, but it wore its unconventionality with ease. Reading it was a pleasure of a new, unexpected kind. Above all, there was its voice, ambivalent, curious, wry, the voice of Jen Fain, a journalist negotiating the fraught landscape of contemporary urban America. Party guests, taxi drivers, brownstone dwellers, professors, journalists, presidents, and debutantes fill these dispatches from the world as Jen finds it."

A phenomenal novel that captures the living essence of NY. Frantic and kinetic, a masterwork. While we appreciate NYRB keeping this in print, these early editions have a phenomenal aura to them. Highly recommended.