Terminal Velocity & My Lesbian Novel

By Vaughn Frantz Miller

Terminal Velocity 
Blanche McCrary Boyd 

Whew! I do not think I have ever reviewed such an action-packed book as Blanche McCrary Boyd’s Terminal Velocity.

If you want a lurid, fast-paced lesbian novel, you should check out this book. The jacket cover gives what feels like a fairly sound introduction: a woman who sat out the 1960’s comes into a lesbian commune in the early 1970’s. From there, her life and mind become upended. The book goes in directions I would never have imagined. As much as I want to tell you about the plot, I want you to experience the surprises in the same way I did. 

Initially, I felt ambiguous about recommending Terminal Velocity. One of my goals is to provide you readers with books which have happy endings or, if nothing else, not tragic endings. It is a difficult balance, the line between tragic and not happy. After all, if the plot itself contains something tragic (most plots necessitate at least something unpleasant or unwanted occurring) and the character does not reach a point in the book where they can look back and say “it was all worth it,” what message is that sending?

I know real life does not have a happily ever after, if only because there is always the next day. I appreciate books which reflect that, even though I am a sucker for a gay happy ending. Moreover, I believe each of us are a constant work in progress. In pursuing that progress, a lot of us develop loves and ambitions outside of romance, and I think showcasing characters who are at that point in their lives is also an important facet of representation for our community.

I finished this book and was initially hesitant on how to categorize the ending of Terminal Velocity as a lot happens in the last 50 pages. Then I read up on the author, mostly curious if she had actually lived in a lesbian commune.

Here is my recommendation for Terminal Velocity: read it, and then go read the (rather short) Wikipedia page for its author, Blache McCrary Boyd. If you do the order wrong, you will end up with a ton of spoilers for the book. If you read about her life after finishing the final page, a lot falls into place. Many life events which occur to the main character happened on a parallel timeline in Boyd’s life.

“‘Sometimes I feel somebody out there, moving towards me. For when I’m ready. For when I’m better spiritually. For when I deserve her.”

“And she deserves you.”’

This quote takes place near the end of the book in the early 1980’s. Boyd, however, published this book in 1997. Interviews with her say that she met her wife in the late 1990’s. There is a lot more of her life to check out, and I highly recommend doing so after reading the book. 

Terminal Velocity is apparently the second book of a trilogy, which I had somehow missed when reading the book jacket. That said, I think it stands well on its own and I didn’t feel I was missing any context. Terminal Velocity is available to borrow from San Diego Public Libraries.

My Lesbian Novel
Renee Gladman 

“Much of my adult life I’d been frustrated with people’s visions of how stories of love between women should go. I hated, upon finishing a book or watching a movie, having to leave these characters I’d been traveling with alone or dead or still suffocating in marriages to men they didn’t want.”

If you relate to this quote, I recommend Renee Gladman’s book My Lesbian Novel. It is technically two books. There is the main book that you are reading, which is an interview between Gladman and a fictional woman. Through the main book, you explore Gladman’s writing process and perspective. Within that main book is a second book, a lesbian novel which Gladman writes through the interview. Between her insightful perspectives and personal anecdotes, the reader is taken through a novel and an author’s mind. A young woman, June, grows apart from her long-term boyfriend and then bumps into a beautiful woman she has met before but cannot remember.

I think my biggest complaint with this book is that it is the first book by Gladman I have read. I wish the recommendation of this book had come with a warning that it should be the second, if not third or fourth novel, one reads by her. So if you enjoyed other books by her, check this out! Personally, I will review another book by Gladman at a later date, as I do not think I got the full picture of her. But I liked what I saw.