Thanks for Coming

A young woman chronicles her search for an orgasm—and the elusive connections between sex and love—in this uproarious and touching memoir.

“[Altman] 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. . . . Inspiring.” —Publishers Weekly

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.