In this frank, exposing memoir, Jong-Fast reflects on her dysfunctional upbringing as her family falls apart
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n 2023, Molly Jong-Fast had the year from hell. Her husband, Matt, discovered he had pancreatic cancer; her father-in-law, aunt and stepfather all died; and her then 81-year-old mother, the novelist and poet Erica Jong, was diagnosed with dementia. “My mother is just a body now,” she states in How to Lose Your Mother. “Erica Jong the person has left the planet.”
That year also marked the 50th anniversary of Fear of Flying, Jong’s autobiographical novel. Hailed as a landmark of feminist literature, it made a star of its author, selling more than 20m copies and leading to appearances on The Tonight Show and the cover of Newsweek. The book coined the phrase “the zipless fuck” to describe casual sex. “Now think about being the offspring of the person who wrote that sentence. And pour one out for me,” writes Jong-Fast.
How to Lose Your Mother documents this annus horribilis when, along with working and parenting three children, the author found herself juggling meetings with doctors, carers, accountants and funeral directors. It also provides snapshots of a life spent in the shadow of her mother’s celebrity. Jong-Fast, who is an only child, learned early that the problem with success is that it tends to wane, leading to grief, bitterness and, in Erica’s case, alcoholism. “Becoming normal like the rest of us, the journey to unfamousness, was for [Erica] an event so strange and stressful, so damaging to her ego, that she was never able to process it.”
