Speedboat is the first fictional novel written by Renata Adler, published in 1976, and re-published by New York Review Classics in 2013, as it was highly acclaimed. The book won the 1976 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. The physical book holds 192 pages and is originally written in English.
The story is centered around Jen Fain, a young female journalist in New York City, and the events that she encounters and that happen around her; all from parties, federal meetings, taxi experiences and conversations with professors fill the pages of the book. The book is not written in a traditional chronological order, but the events that Jen Fain encounter are instead spread seemingly randomly throughout the book. Therefore, the reader may decide and interpret the meaning behind Renata’s words for themselves, as it isn’t straightforward.
Renata Adler had worked for The New Yorker as a staff writer-reporter, was the chief film critic for the New York Times, and was a journalist and an author of fiction and non-fiction alike. She has also studied law at Yale Law School. She has also written books under the pen name of "Ben Daniels".
