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Summary: Reports from the front lines of the sexual revolution.
Review: Once upon a time, we ignored the rules or rewrote the rules or realized there just weren't any rules, after all. Sex was just sex: Good, bad, ugly and funny. Especially FUNNY. And - oh, my! - it could even be GUILTLESS. There is certainly some lovely erotic classic liturature out there, as some reviewers have pointed out. But, honestly, when I'm speeding along in the dark via Amtrak or stuck in the elevator with that guy from marketing, suspended somewhere between the 43rd and 44th floors, it's the ZF that comes to mind, not Lady Chatterley.I loved this book when I first read it. Maybe it just has to be right right time of your life....
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Summary: Sex, love, and liberation
Review: I am a man, and I read this book because Bob Dylan talks about Erica Jong in one of his songs. Athough no classic, this book is well worth reading. She breaks through some walls regarding women and their sexual role/place. Of course the main character is white, affluent and Jewish so it still suffers from being trapped in the upper-middle class mainstream. It would have been better if the protagonist was an 18 year old skinny black girl from Ethiopia who comes of age in an era of sexual and personal liberation. Nonetheless, read it if only because Bob Dylan talks about her.
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Summary: Why all the hype? A huge letdown.
Review: In all fairness, I wasn't able to finish this novel. The author seems to have a singular obsession with things sexual to the exclusion of most of the important characteristics of a good story. If you like the theme of a woman's sexual liberation, read Chopin's _The Awakening_ or Lawrence's _Lady Chatterley's Lover_ instead. (Besides, the sex is much better in _LCL_.) In addition to tackling this controversial subject, these books are masterfully written and classics for all time.
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Summary: Not quite so shocking in the 90s
Review: I picked up this book in my mother's garage about 3 years ago, when I was 18. I admit that I was interested in it because of the sexy cover quotes like "steamy!" and "shocking!" I read it. And it's turned out to be one of my favorite books. Not because it got me hot and bothered.. it wasn't any more "steamy" than an episode of NYPD blue, but because I found myself identifying so much with Isadora's plight... her urge to find herself, to balance her love for her husband with her urge to find the "zipless f***" and to do it all in a society that frowned upon a healthy sexual appetite in women. Some people have found that the novel is self-serving and self-righteous, but not a drop of that came through to me. As a matter of fact, I was shocked to hear it! I loved the book and I think most young women would too - which is why you're hearing a heartfel reccomendation from me!
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Summary: Man, You People Are So Serious!
Review: What's all the analysis about? Read it and either you like it or not. Some parts you like, some you might not. If you're not likin what you're readin then get rid of it. Get on with what you can read. This book is an excellent ride. Genuinely unique insight and well written.
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Summary: Fear of Everything
Review: I had heard so much about how this book was so 'liberating'. It is not at all. It is deeply conservative, if not reactionary. It finally admits that women cannot do without men, are helpless, disorganised, flighty (indeed) and generally useless unless some man with an appendage is telling them what to do. For all her evocations of women writers Isadora is the opposite of them. Is this meant to be her tragedy? Her fear? If so, it never comes across that way. She is too privileged, self-indulgent, whiny and obsessive for us to really care what happens to her. And yet it is funny and in some places deeply inspired. But Portnoy's Complaint was better written.
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Summary: Kept me turning the pages....
Review: It was interesting and empowering because it echoed what goes through women's minds. Maybe we wouldn't have made the same choices that this woman did but it was refreshing to read a book where a woman made exotic choices, lived through them and became strengthened in the end.
This book is a worthwhile read for those who are interested in seeing a woman lose herself in order to find herself.
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Summary: Powerful Novel Retains Its Place in History.
Review: I get a little peeved when I read some reviews of this novel passing it off as some sort of salacious, "Peyton Place"-ish trifle meant to shock midwestern Americans. The truth is, over thirty years since its appearance, that the reviews Henry Miller and John Updike offered were no less than prophetic. The book is a genuine work of literary art and craft, frank but necessarily so in the same way "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was. Jong's style is compelling; her opinions, questions, and searches for her character's validations are no less valuable today. Perhaps a good portion of people were in a more open state of mind in the early seventies, more willing to experiment with lifestyle, substances, morality, even music and art. But are people today in less need of this kind of open consciousness? One only needs to examine the current political climate to see that we're heading for a revisionist version of McCarthyism. So perhaps the views expressed in "Fear of Flying" bear reexamination. This book has so many ways to praise it one hardly knows where to begin. But as a man too young to read it in 1973, I am profoundly grateful to Ms. Jong for the opportunity to read and grow with it now and, no doubt, many times in the future (seeing it back in print, I quickly purchased 3 copies to get me through several more planned readings in the coming years). This edition features the new 2002 afterword by the author, which is invaluable. Jong's perspective on the value of the book, its uncertain early history, publishing stats, and humbling effect on the lady herself add to the novel's resonance. This may be told from a much-needed woman's persepective, but I refuse to label it as "women's" or "feminine" lit. This towering work should not be so conveniently monikered. Its far too challenging, and important, for that. How about simply "classic"?
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