How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir

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A brutally funny mother-daughter memoir that asks the question, How can you lose something you never had Molly Jong-Fast is the only child of Erica Jong, author of the feminist autobiographical novel Fear of Flying. A sensational exploration of female sexual desire, it catapulted Erica into the heady world of fame in the early 1970s. Molly grew up with her mother everywhere - on television, in the crossword puzzle, in the newspaper. But rarely at home. How to Lose Your Mother is Molly's delicious and despairing memoir about an intense mother-daughter relationship, a sometimes chaotic upbringing with a fame-hungry parent, and how that can really mess you up. But with her mother's heartbreaking descent into dementia, and Molly's realization that she is going to lose this remarkable woman, it is also a story of love, of loss, of confusion and of deep grief. Honest, moving, sharp and funny, How to Lose Your Mother takes us behind the scenes of a fascinating and sometimes tumultuous family dynamic, revels in the gossipy details of Erica's famous friends and enemies, and leaves us with a better understanding of our own most precious relationships.

Reviews

A gripping memoir about mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, loss and healing, and what it means to finally accept your past and become an adult. Despite being raised in the shadow of fame, Molly's story is both uniquely specific and utterly, exquisitely relatable. -- Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
Mesmerizing, intimate, wise, unputdownable, crazily honest, heartbreaking, funny, illuminating Beautiful and painful at the same time, just like real life. -- Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird
Conveys the mess, terror, loneliness and glory of familial love, in all its riveting complexity. -- Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History

Author Bio

Molly Jong-Fast is the author of three books, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and host of the Fast Politics podcast.