"[1] The novel starts with a first-person reflection on her life so far by the protagonist, Virginia "Ginny" Hull Babcock Bliss, as she catches a plane to look after her gravely ill mother.

[1] It was "the subject of considerable pre-publication hyperbole..., soaring in the slip stream of Fear of Flying, Erica Jong's bestselling hymn to the body electric.

"[2] Time called it an "abundantly entertaining progress through the unsettled 60s" and noted that "as exuberant caricature Kinflicks is authentically inspired"; while the novel "teems with cartoon eccentrics mouthing balloonfuls of inflated nonsense[, u]nhappily, Ginny [the protagonist] is equally one dimensional.

"[1] More than 30 years after its publication, Katherine Dieckmann, reviewing the author's 2007 memoir, also commented on Kinflicks, calling it a "raucous novel [that] was all the rage among my high school set for its lurid paperback cover (nude female back, gilt lettering) and its frank talk of erections and lesbian hook-ups.

Revisiting the novel 30 years later, it’s clear the packaging sold the contents short: Alther’s best-known book is a witty coming-of-age tale in which a tart-tongued protagonist named Ginny wanders her way through an identity crisis, mostly against a classic counterculture background.