“I am the only child of a once-famous woman…. To say my mother and I are close doesn’t really express the full magnitude of the relationship. We are painfully, inexorably, chronically close, the way magnets are. Sometimes when I lie in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, I’m not even sure I exist without her. She created me and I enabled her.”

And so it begins. HOW TO LOSE YOUR MOTHER is the newly published memoir of Molly Jong-Fast, the only child of FEAR OF FLYING author Erica Jong. Here, she tells the story of how her mother, who now suffers from dementia, affected her life, ruined her life, and continues to overwhelm her life during the most difficult year of her existence. It’s hard to put down.

"[HOW TO LOSE YOUR MOTHER] is about not just losing loved ones but also not losing yourself in the midst of the madness of change. This is a memoir with lasting life lessons for every reader."

Molly is a journalist and novelist who has had plenty of success on her own, yet she continues to be plagued by the lessons and detriments of a life in the public eye as Erica loses her grip on her own reality. HOW TO LOSE YOUR MOTHER is a vibrant (in the way that tragedies have energy), funny, heartbreaking and honest look at a mother-daughter pair that has kept literary types talking for years. But it actually is a woman’s dive into facing the consequences of her life at middle age and being forced to deal with her own changing ideals while she is needed by everyone around her to sort out theirs.

Molly’s parents got divorced when she was very young. By then, Erica was enjoying all the rewards and proclivities of fame and leaving Molly’s well-being (regardless of Erica's claims that she loved Molly so very much) to her nanny, while she plane-hopped all over the world, amassing friends, enemies and lovers as she lived out her famous writer dreams. Molly turned to drugs at a young age to help her disregard the constant overwhelming self-hatred that her mother helped her breed, thanks to constant reviews of her weight, her hair and, well, her entire being. Her story about going to rehab at 19 already has been told by Erica, embellished and full of maternal love, but Molly feels she has to set the record straight. There are many of those instances here.

Anyone with a narcissistic mother will find Molly’s struggle quite relatable. However, this particular narcissistic mother is a writer who has spent decades writing about herself and her offspring --- from children’s books about divorce to novels that highlight many of Molly’s growing-up stories. HOW TO LOSE YOUR MOTHER is more stirring and sensational because of the fame aspect, but it is utterly a tale of regaining one’s voice after someone else tells all of your stories incorrectly.

Molly is a good writer. She brings the whole of her family to this tale --- from grandparents and parents to family friends, not to mention her own children and her husband, Matthew. As Erica’s dementia diagnosis deepens, Molly finds herself in the midst of Matthew’s health crisis and leap towards the edge of the mortal coil. She is also dealing with her burgeoning celebrity as a TV news pundit and journalist, as well as helping one child with college applications. In short, she is a famous version of any female reader, stuck between kids and parents who need a new level of assistance in the post-COVID world. And that is what makes this book so readable --- its relatability, regardless of how much money Molly has been around and the notable people who populate her family’s community.

For someone dealing with so much emotional trauma, Molly Jong-Fast reveals herself to be pretty damn strong. Sober for decades, her story of giving up her addictions compared to her mother’s succumbing to her own is worth reading as one wicked journey. Factor in all the other relationships she writes about so piercingly, and HOW TO LOSE YOUR MOTHER becomes the most important guide for all humans experiencing middle age. It is about not just losing loved ones but also not losing yourself in the midst of the madness of change. This is a memoir with lasting life lessons for every reader.