
Member Reviews

This memoir follows the author as she navigates a difficult time in which she put her parents in a care home and her husband was battling pancreatic cancer. Her relationship with her mother has always been tense as her mother frequently put her career, drinking and romantic entanglements ahead of her daughter. Her mum had narcissistic tendencies and she needed to be the centre of attention and to be adored for her work all the time. Her mum, the renown feminist Erica Jong is struggling with not being as relevant anymore and with a diagnosis of dementia. I found that the author and her mum have a lot more in common than she thinks, the frequent name dropping was tiresome and I would have preferred a book more focused on their mother-daughter relationship. I feel that the book would have been better, if the author took some years and had lots of self reflection before writing this memoir. Overall, an interesting read.
I received this eARC from NetGalley and Pan Macmillan | Picador in exchange for a free and honest review.

A brutally honest, but heartbreaking reflection on families, relationships and specifically that relationship between mother and daughter and how they form a major part of who we are. Growing up with a 'celebrity' mother who was an alcoholic and narcissistic in their behaviours, and how that impacted the author's childhood and their future relationship with their mother over the years. The author is faced with having to be the grown up and make decisions as their mothers health deteriorates further with dementia. The author writes in a way that is so open and honest amidst such turmoil, this memoir takes you through the emotions and feelings that are brought to the surface while trying to fight for her day to day life, and come to terms and accept their past, the relationship, and what lies ahead in their own future. A memoir unlike others, and at times very relatable.
Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC

I don’t often read memoirs, but this one was very compelling. How To Lose Your Mother is a story of one woman’s lifetime living in the shadow of her famous mother. Her famous, narcissistic mother, the writer Erica Jong. This book is in parts funny, and poignant, and terribly terribly heartbreaking. To be the child of someone so bonkers as Erica Jong clearly was, must have been incredibly difficult. To say I enjoyed this book is a little strange to admit, but I really did. And that’s because at its heart there is a thread of humanity and love, and the hope that if we pay attention to our loved ones, sincerely, then things will be alright.

***advance review copy received from NetGalley in return for an honest review***
Sometimes I find memoirs a challenging read, because they meander and there’s no definitive narrative to follow so the topics jump from one thought to another and it’s not always linear or cohesive.
This is not that - whilst it’s brutally open and honest at times, and whilst the author is very different to myself - this is a compelling read made all the more interesting by the mundane way seriously famous names are routinely dropped.
The people in this memoir live an entirely different life in an entirely different way to likely most people reading it; but the onward march towards death and what may come before that is common to us all - which is what makes this an interesting read.

How to Lose Your Mother by Molly Jong-Fast is an absorbing memoir about a very difficult time in her life dealing with elderly ageing parents and a husband with a serious illness as well as grappling with her past.

I read Fear of Flying many decades ago but knew very little about the author, Erica Jong. In this memoir, her daughter Molly writes honestly about her life growing up as an only child of Jong and about her mother’s dementia.
I was completely immersed in How to Lose Your Mother, some parts of it really resonated with me and I loved the style of writing, which flowed effortlessly and felt like Molly was talking directly to me. The author writes movingly and insightfully about the bond between mother and daughter, living with a parent’s alcoholism and what happens when our parents age. It’s an intense, reflective, funny and emotional read that I would recommend.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.