Thrill-Bent

by Jan Richman

Journalist and armchair thrill-seeker Jan Richman gets a freelance assignment to write about the nation’s antique wooden roller coasters. Jan takes off across the U.S. to report on a fanatical sub-culture. This picaresque research junket dovetails with the wedding of her Tourette’s-riddled father, whom she hasn’t seen in years. Brazen and stingingly funny, Thrill-Bent zooms from Coney Island to New Orleans to the San Fernando Valley as our heroine learns how to be truly impulsive in a buttoned-down world.

326 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2012

About the author

My collection of poems, Because the Brain Can Be Talked into Anything, won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets (judged by Robert Pinsky) and was published by Louisiana State University Press in 1995. My novel Thrill-Bent was published by Tupelo Press in 2012. I have received an NEA Grant in Literature and my writing has been published in many periodicals, including the Kenyon Review, The Nation, and Ploughshares, as well as several anthologies. I received my MFA in Creative Writing from NYU. I live in San Francisco, and am currently shopping my manuscript, a comic novel called Free Ms. Greene, loosely based on a bizarre experience teaching at the Academy of Art in SF.

Reviews

[Kim Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm. I don't know where I first learned about this book, but I expected it to be a look at historic roller coasters across the US, which I'm very interested in, and there's really so little of that. I had to recalibrate, and I couldn't completely, so maybe this review reflects my frustration. (In other words, take it with a grain of salt.)

The author does visit a few roller coasters, and very briefly describes them. But the book is mostly her autobiography, except that it's a novel. So perhaps it's an account of her life that is so fictionalized that it had to be classified as fiction? I'm not sure. Very disorienting, just like a roller coaster. So well done.

Anyway, I will say that Richman is a gifted writer. She has a fresh, interesting style and I did enjoy reading the book, which somewhat centers around her relationship with her Tourette's-addled father. There are anecdotes about thrill-seeking adventures of various types, which I suppose was intended to dovetail with the roller coaster sub-theme, but then there are stories that had nothing to do with that theme. I found the whole thing discombobulating, just like this review. I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm giving it three stars because it was interesting enough and I like her style.

[Angelina · Rating 2 out of 5]

eh. this book was okay. the author writes some beautiful prose at times, but the story and the situations seemed a little flat--despite the heavy reliance on sexual situations/connotations.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a throughly weird book. Normally, I'm all about the weird, but this one was a bit much. I always find it strange when authors name their protagonist after themselves when they're writing a work of fiction- so we're not supposed to think this is autobiographical, because it's fiction, but they have your name? Yeah, okay. That made it odd from the start.

I enjoyed some parts of this narrative and others, not so much. The anecdotes about riding the coasters and the people she met along the way were the most compelling parts. I enjoyed meeting Buffy and Furry and her time spent in NOLA. But any of the flashbacks to her bizarre childhood with her creepy dad were just totally alienating to me as a reader. Nothing seemed to fit together in this book. Was it purposefully fragmented? There were some really nice sentiments and ideas, interesting characters, but a weak plot overall. I was perplexed by this novel, though intrigued.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

"His American Airlines flight attendant ex-girlfriend ... has big Charo hair with broccoli bangs, the puffy kind that curl over her forehead in enormous florets. I have more meatlike hair, which hangs in thick flanks and wiener curls, just begging for someone to lop off a little filet and make themselves a sandwich." (19)

"... he would squeeze his pillow into a little ball and push it tightly into his belly, wrapping his body around it like an oyster around a pearl." (77)