Title: Thanks for Coming Author: Mara Altman Publisher: Harper Perennial Publish Date: 2009 Pages: 377 Genres:: Memoir, Humor Reviewer: J. Arathoon

Rating:

Thanks For Coming is Mara Altman’s memoir chronicling her quest to have her first orgasm. An enjoyable romp, this book is a humorous examination of our culture’s hang-ups and obsession with the female orgasm.

The book is not without flaws. The first few chapters are clumsy, with pacing that is jerky and rushed, and the humor often falling flat. It’s also hard in the beginning not to dismiss her apparent lack of effort—why doesn’t she just get a vibrator and get it over with, like everyone’s telling her? You wonder. She mentions on page 1 that “an essential, yet quite counterproductive, part of my problem was that ‘trying’ didn’t actually include touching myself.” The reader could be forgiven for thinking they’re going to read an entire memoir about a prudish uptight woman’s quest for an immaculate orgasm, and putting the book down unfinished.

But that would be a mistake, because after Altman hits her stride this becomes a wonderfully complex and humorous look at the world of orgasms in general and Altman’s experience in particular. With a journalist’s knack for throwing herself into a project, Altman pursues learning about the big O through New York and across America, even seeking it out on her birthright trip to Israel, where she asks tour guides and street vendors their opinions on sex and respectfully but firmly requests the Wailing Wall for help her on her quest. In her research, Altman interviews bondage gurus, the grandmother of masturbation, a sacred whore, an expert at the Consortium for Sex Research in Space, and her own surprisingly orgasmic grandparents; she visits orgasm camp, and scrubs in to watch a plastic surgeon who redesigns vaginas with lasers (a man she dubs “the Box Cutter”) in action. Many of these interviews just make up a humorous chapter each, but some of the people interviewed become full characters in the book, becoming Mara’s friends and helpers along her road to pleasure.

The book serves not only as a tour through the raunchy side of life, but also an examination of what can cause sexual hang-ups and how much of an impact they can have on your life. Altman never gives us one “ah-hah, that’s why she’s inorgasmic at 26!” moment; instead, we’re presented with a realistically unfolding history with the ups and downs that can lead to a disconnect between a woman and her sexuality. There are some traumas, true, but there’s also just your basic insecurities that multiply to crippling status as insecurities often do, and of course the exigencies of life getting in the way. But this very exploration, and the humorous and open tone Altman uses to present it, is what makes this a book of interest to anyone who feels their connection to their sexuality could be deepened, rather than just a niche book for people dealing with an inability to orgasm.

Overall, this is a witty and touching book that proves that for every different person claiming to be an expert there’s a different way of looking at the female orgasm, but that ultimately, what really matters is learning to embrace it on an individual level and using it to make life more fun and pleasurable. And that’s a message worth reading.