From the political writer and podcaster, a ferociously honest and disarmingly funny memoir about her elusive mother’s encroaching dementia and a reckoning with her complicated childhood.

Molly Jong-Fast is the only child of a famous woman, writer Erica Jong, whose sensational book FEAR OF FLYING launched her into second-wave feminist stardom. She grew up yearning for a connection with her dreamy, glamorous, just-out-of-reach mother, who always seemed to be heading somewhere that wasn’t with Molly. When, in 2023, Erica was diagnosed with dementia just as Molly’s husband discovered he had a rare cancer, Jong-Fast was catapulted into a transformative year.

HOW TO LOSE YOUR MOTHER is a compulsively readable memoir about an intense mother-daughter relationship, a sometimes chaotic upbringing with a fame-hungry parent, and the upheavals that challenge our hard-won adulthood. A pitch-perfect balance of acceptance and rage, humor and heart, HOW TO LOSE YOUR MOTHER tells a universal story of loss alongside a singular story of a literary life. This is a memoir that will stand alongside the classics of the genre.