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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
sad
medium-paced
I related to a lot if her feelings, being a middle aged person with a mom of dementia…. Especially that ever nagging feeling of being a bad daughter no matter what decision I make.
What I didn’t like about this book was that it felt repetitive and disjointed. I do, however, understand that that is largely how we process trauma and the present mixed with the past. I just found it jarring as a reader. I felt like maybe she’s more accustomed to writing shorter pieces?
What I didn’t like about this book was that it felt repetitive and disjointed. I do, however, understand that that is largely how we process trauma and the present mixed with the past. I just found it jarring as a reader. I felt like maybe she’s more accustomed to writing shorter pieces?
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Our difficult parents and traumatized childhoods were not similar but a lot of this book resonated with me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cancer, Death, Eating disorder, Grief, Death of parent
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
fast-paced
fast-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
reflective
fast-paced
reflective
slow-paced
Molly Jong-Fast is the only child of Erica Jong. Both are authors and famous. In this memoir, Molly reckons with her difficult childhood and relationship with her mother, while also handling (or not) her current situations - her mother’s dementia, her husband’s cancer, depression, work, and the death of other family.
This is the first time I have encountered the writing of Molly and I’d never heard of Erica. I chose this book because I love memoirs and am fascinated by mother-daughter relationships (have my own complicated ones). This memoir wasn’t a favorite. The tone and repetition annoyed me. I found the writing jumbled and disorganized in time and topic (I prefer organized writing). I suspect Jong-Fast intentionally writes in this style for this book to illustrate what a grieving mind does. Disease, aging, death, abandonment, loneliness, addiction, and grief change us - specifically our brains - and the scattered writing brings that home as she deals with each of these issues. Still I didn’t enjoy the experience and read to finish rather than out of curiosity or interest.
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I’m not quite sure why I keep reading books (particularly memoirs) that break my heart, but the hits keep coming.
Jong-Fast’s memoir reads sometimes like you just sat down for coffee with a friend you haven’t seen in a while and have just asked “so what’s new with you?” There were moments I wanted to respond to her rhetorical questions, grab her hand in shared emotion, or tell her that I understood (although I can’t understand, could never understand, as my mother isn’t the singular Erica Jong (but as Jong-Fast might say, who is?)).
But I know what it is to lose people the way she’s lost people, and I recognized the emotions that come with it. I was particularly struck by the importance she saw in the same-sex parent-child relationship - people always talk about the other dynamic, but I found her allusions to the way it shapes us interesting to consider.
It’s a story viscerally told, particularly if you listen to the audiobook, and you get the sense that Jong-Fast felt compelled to write it, which makes it a compelling read.
Jong-Fast’s memoir reads sometimes like you just sat down for coffee with a friend you haven’t seen in a while and have just asked “so what’s new with you?” There were moments I wanted to respond to her rhetorical questions, grab her hand in shared emotion, or tell her that I understood (although I can’t understand, could never understand, as my mother isn’t the singular Erica Jong (but as Jong-Fast might say, who is?)).
But I know what it is to lose people the way she’s lost people, and I recognized the emotions that come with it. I was particularly struck by the importance she saw in the same-sex parent-child relationship - people always talk about the other dynamic, but I found her allusions to the way it shapes us interesting to consider.
It’s a story viscerally told, particularly if you listen to the audiobook, and you get the sense that Jong-Fast felt compelled to write it, which makes it a compelling read.