How To Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir by Molly Jong-Fast

Ever since the publication of “Mommy Dearest,” in 1978, the genre of a mother-daughter memoir has taken on a dark turn. More recently Jennette McCurdy's “I’m Glad My Mom Died” detailed the abuse and manipulation that her mother inflicted upon McCurdy when she was a young actress. Now Molly Jong-Fast has written a memoir about life with her own mother, best-selling author Eric Jong. It is difficult for anyone who is not in their 80s today to realize just how famous Erica Jong was when her book “The Fear of Flying” was published in 1973. She was rock star famous. She was movie star famous. She was as famous as an author could be. She is credited with ushering in the second wave of feminism with its bold portrayal of Isadora Wing, who expressed her own sexual desires at a time when women were not permitted to do that. It could not have been easy for Jong-Fast to be the only child of a woman who was literally everywhere. Jong was on television, on talk shows, in newspapers and magazines. But to her daughter, she was everywhere but home. After grappling to make sense of the relationship with her mother for most of her life, Jong-Fast is thrown a complete curveball; Her mother, this larger-than-life figure, begins to show signs of dementia. Jong-Fast has to find a way to take care of her mother, and thus their traditional roles are reversed. This is an honest and very moving book that sadly centers around an issue that so many people face when confronted with senility and Alzheimer's disease. When you parent begins to show signs of mental illness, do they stop being your parent? Does the relationship cease, or does it continue in a different and heartbreaking way? An excellent book about a very difficult topic.