Thanks for Coming: One Young Woman's Quest for an Orgasm (P.S. Series) »

Mara Altman received her M.S. in journalism from Columbia University in 2005. A former staff writer at the Village Voice, she has also written for the New York Times and New York. She lives in Brooklyn.

By turns uproarious and touching, the memoir of a young woman's search for an orgasm—and for the elusive connections between sex and love

Twenty-six-year-old Mara Altman wanted to know what all the screaming was about. She'd lost her virginity at seventeen; grown up in southern California with sexually free parents; had lovers in India, Burma, and Peru; and spent a year in Bangkok observing all manner of depravity. And yet she was an attractive, successful, single woman in New York who'd never had an orgasm.

And so she embarked on a wildly funny, emotionally resonant odyssey—a journey both inside and outside herself—only to discover that, for Mara, orgasm was connected to a part of her that no vibrator could reach. Thanks for Coming is one woman's look at our obsession with and anxiety over the female orgasm. Her quest to get her own yields poignant results that will surprise even the sexually awakened among us. From sex shows to sex conventions, from a therapist's couch to her own couch, from the bedroom to the bar, Mara Altman proves to be a guide as hilarious as she is investigative.

Publishers Weekly

At 26, Altman is far from a virgin, but, as her memoir opens, she has yet to experience an orgasm. So she does what any enterprising journalist in a similar situation would do: she recruits a slew of sex experts to help find the key to unlock her pleasure-not that she writes about it so obliquely. It won't be easy: Altman is "grossed out" by masturbation and other aspects of her sexuality; told to imagine her vulva as a flower, she instead sees "an inside-out bat flying backwards." Consequently, she wouldn't necessarily recognize an orgasm if she did have one. But she writes about the parade of research scientists, professional dominants and prospective boyfriends with self-deprecating humor and a grudging recognition of what others peg as her sexual and emotional immaturity. Altman can come across as self-absorbed, but perhaps that's to be expected with such personal subject matter. If readers are willing to ride out occasional impatient reactions all the way to the happy ending, they may find her journey of self-discovery subtly inspiring. (Apr. 14)

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