Fear of Dying: A Novel, by Erica Jong
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Fear of Dying: A Novel, by Erica Jong
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Four decades ago, Erica Jong revolutionized the way we look at love, marriage and sex. Her world-wide bestseller, FEAR OF FLYING opened the doors for writers from Jennifer Weiner to Lena Dunham. Now she does it again by giving us powerful, new perspective on the next phase of women's lives. Full of the sly humor, deep wisdom and poignancy we know from her poetry, fiction and essays, she delivers the novel women everywhere have been waiting for...
FEAR OF DYING
As the afternoon of life looms over Vanessa Wonderman, she watches her parents age, attends doctor appointments with her pregnant daughter, and sits by the hospital bed of her husband, Asher, fifteen years her senior. With her best years as an actress behind her, she's discovering that beginnings are easy, but endings can be hard.
Could her fountain of youth fantasies be fulfilled on zipless.com? A site inspired by the writings of her best friend, Isadora Wing, it promises "no strings attached" encounters-and Vanessa is so restless that she's willing to try anything.
Fear of Dying is a daring and delightful look at what it really takes to be human and female in the 21st century. Wildly funny and searingly honest, it is a story for everyone who has ever been shaken and changed by love.
Fear of Dying: A Novel, by Erica Jong- Amazon Sales Rank: #150921 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-08
- Released on: 2015-09-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.52" h x 1.06" w x 5.69" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
Review
“How Erica is able to deal with all these sensitive issues and still make the book funny is amazing. I loved reading it.” ―Woody Allen
“Erica Jong has done it again! Fear of Dying is a big, bawdy, beautifully-written romp through online hookups, female friendships, children grappling with adulthood and parents negotiating with death. Fear of Dying is big, warm-hearted, generous book that will satisfy Jong's longtime fans and delight her new readers.” ―Jennifer Weiner
“Moving and deeply poetic, Fear of Dying is a compelling novel that truly understands the process of aging. With astonishing images on every page, Erica Jong gives us a veiled spiritual autobiography with an unstoppable quality, a narrative momentum that held me from first to last as it seamlessly unfolds from Jong's previous work, yet with sharp new edge, giving us a wise book, a book to savor.” ―Jay Parini, author of The Last Station and Why Poetry Matters
“Erica Jong has written a whip-smart, insightful, hilarious and ridiculously relatable new novel, Fear of Dying. In her latest novel, Jong revisits and renovates her old haunts. Destined to be called an instant classic, I could not put this stunning book down. In 1973, Fear of Flying was the book we needed; now the book we need is Fear of Dying.” ―Julie Klam, bestselling author of Friendkeeping and You Had Me at Woof
“Erica Jong fans, rejoice! Her new novel, the cleverly and aptly titled Fear of Dying, is a truth-teller's dream. In it, Jong and her alter egos face life's most difficult challenges, head on and all at once. As the great poet William Butler Yeats wrote, "the only two things worth writing about are sex and death," and in Fear of Dying, Jong takes on both. Along the way, she also tells the story of a marriage that grows happier despite all. This wise book, written in prose gorgeous enough to make one swoon, will delight and enrich the lives of everyone who reads it.” ―Rosemary Daniell, award-winning author of Secrets of the Zona Rosa: How Writing (and Sisterhood) Can Change Women’s Lives
About the Author ERICA JONG is a poet, novelist, and essayist, best known for her eight New York Times bestselling novels, including Fear of Flying (which has sold twenty-seven million copies in forty languages) and Fear of Fifty. Ms. Jong is also the author of seven award-winning collections of poetry. Her latest, Love Comes First, was released by Tarcher-Penguin in January 2009. In addition, Jong has written several nonfiction books. Her work has appeared all over the world.
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Most helpful customer reviews
74 of 76 people found the following review helpful. Intelligent, literary novel -- "Fear is a waste of life" By Kathy Cunningham I was 21-years-old when Erica Jong's FEAR OF FLYING was published, and I remember being mesmerized by the way she wrote about sex. This was 1973, and while the woman's movement was definitely going strong, female sexuality was still something mysterious and not totally acceptable to talk about. But Jong's narrator, Isadora Wing, longed for what she called the "zipless ****," a spontaneous sexual encounter with a nameless stranger that would be pure experience without attachments, strings, or obligations. And now, over four decades later, Jong revisits Isadora's world in FEAR OF DYING, which focuses on the vast changes in women's lives as we grow old and face our own mortality. This time, the narrator is 60-year-old Vanessa Wonderman, a "darling friend" of Isadora's who is dealing with her aging parents, her 85-year-old husband, and a beloved standard poodle also nearing his end. The story Vanessa tells is somber and difficult, but also uplifting and affirming in surprising ways. I'm just a few years older than Vanessa, and I totally identify with her struggles to deal with her dying parents, her fears about her husband's health issues, and her oddly beautiful attachment to her poodle Belinda. It's just the sex talk that doesn't quite work for me this time around. And there's lot of it!The one thing I remember most about FEAR OF FLYING was what happened when Isadora finally found herself in a position to experience the "zipless ****." Instead of leaping into it with open arms, she rebuffed the stranger's advances, realizing only much later that she had missed her chance. In FEAR OF DYING, Vanessa is a former soap opera actress who has had many zipless experiences, as well as countless "zipped-up" ones. She's been married several times, had an abundance of lovers, and sees herself as a sexually free woman. She's also super wealthy, as is her billionaire husband. But as she watches her parents grow weaker and weaker in their final months of life, it's sex she hopes will save her from the "fear of dying." She runs an ad on a fantasy sex website. She contacts former lovers. What does she want, Jong asks? "I wanted sex to prove that I would never die," Vanessa says.Like Vanessa and Isadora (and like Erica Jong), I've changed a lot in the past 40-plus years. What titillated and intrigued me in 1973 doesn't quite do the same today. I, too, am dealing with the end of my parents' lives. Like Vanessa's Asher, my own husband has health issues that threaten to cut short his life. And my own beloved cat (like Vanessa's dog, Belinda) is showing signs that her life, too, may be nearing its end. It's all very hard, and very real, and very much a part of all of our lives. But I can't quite identify with Vanessa's delight in sexual dalliances, her love of sexually charged words I can't imagine using in casual speech, or her conviction that through orgasm she can immunize herself against death. The novel's first line is, "I used to love the power I had over men," which is all about sex. By the end, however, Vanessa realizes that "We give [sex] much more power than it perhaps deserves."I loved parts of FEAR OF DYING, because it spoke to me of things I, myself, am pondering these days. What gives us purpose? How can we forgive ourselves our shortcomings? How can we forgive those who have hurt us? And how can we face the end of life, when we're never quite sure what living is in the first place? As Vanessa finally says, "Death is fearlessness. It's the anticipation of our dying that's the problem." In some ways, Vanessa begins this novel believing that life is a huge joke, with death as its ultimate punch line. She longs for sex as a means of anesthetizing herself against the punch in the gut she knows will eventually come. But she learns pretty much the same thing her friend Isadora did years before - life and death are the same thing. The very act of living is also the act of dying, since every step we take, every move we make, brings us that much closer to the end. It's not sex that ends up saving Vanessa, but living. "Don't be afraid," Jong tells us. "Fear is a waste of life." And that is something we can all celebrate.This is an intelligent and literary novel with a believable and identifiable protagonist. She may be a bit more sexually super-charged than many of us in our sixties, but her journey is in many ways all of ours. I do recommend FEAR OF DYING.
31 of 32 people found the following review helpful. Life Happens, and Even When it's Bad, it's Funny By Tamara Thorne When I was fourteen I read Fear of Flying. It wasn't in my preferred genres - horror or science fiction - but just skimming a few pages made it a must buy. Jong's style - brilliant, witty, laugh-out-loud funny - was inspiring to a kid who aimed to be a writer when she grew up. (It also taught me, the ultimate innocent, a lot about sex. which was pretty enthralling in itself.) Honestly, I credit Jong in part with turning me into the character-driven (horror) writer I am today.So, while Fear of Dying is absolutely not what I normally read, I couldn't wait to crack it. I loved it almost as much as the original. Jong's style is just as beautiful and inspirational now as it was way back when. Instead of Isadora Wing, the protagonist is a feisty friend of hers, Vanessa Wonderman. Vanessa is sixty and feeling time creep up on her as she deals with her older husband's health problems, her aging parents, and her aging poodle. Everything is changing for her and she can't turn time back.The book is about coping with the changes that come with aging and its almost as instructive to me now as it was when I was learning about what it meant to become a young adult woman. Vanessa sees sex as something that can keep her young and this struck me as, well, odd, but different strokes... In a way, it's a frightening book because it deals so much with endings and death, yet it is also very uplifting. Primarily, it made me glad that I married a man my own age, but it also made me think about things I really don't care to consider... but that I should. The story, despite its serious nature, made me smile and laugh. It's a terrific book, especially if you're on the far side of forty.
54 of 61 people found the following review helpful. Well written, but I neither like nor agree with Vanessa and her choices By M. Donnelly While I identify with Vanessa's stage of life, I don't agree with her nor do I like her.Why does Jong need to equate feminism with self-centeredness, a lack of loyalty and faithfulness in relationships and a true lack of personal and moral character?Vanessa is facing much of what I faced over the last decade. Parents in crisis. Death. Complex relationships with siblings. How does she react? She seeks refuge in meaningless sex through a website, Zipless--a reprise of the idea of sex with no strings attached brought into light in Jong's breakthrough novel, Fear of Flying. While Vanessa may look like she has "everything" -- money, fame (from her former days as a soap opera star), a loving husband -- she still feels that her life is somehow unfulfilled. Perhaps it's the panic she feels as she watches her parents slip into dementia and, finally, death. Or the petty squabbling over the family business that one of her siblings 'inherited'. Or maybe it's the sadness she felt in losing her dog. Whatever the case, she completely disregards her marriage and goes on a quest to fill the void via these meaningless sexual encounters.What is it that causes people to believe it's okay to betray the ones we love? Vanessa betrays her husband with little guilt. She betrays friend Isadora Wing. And when she finally realizes that the thing she most wanted was staring her in the face the entire time...I feel like she didn't deserve it.I have to say that Jong's writing has MUCH improved over the years. Fear of Flying may have been a blockbuster, but the constant soul-searching asides had me skipping pages and pages just to get through the story. Fear of Dying made me feel more in tune with Vanessa's story than I did Isadora's in Fear of Flying. I flew through this book, and the way Jong wove the characters and the story made it an effortless and engrossing read.But here's the rub: I neither like nor admire Vanessa in any way. Her narcissism and her complete lack of moral ground really made her repulsive to me. I wouldn't want her as a friend. While I've been through much of what she's experienced, there is no way that I could identify with or empathize with her actions. So, at the end of the day, while the book was well written, it's not something I'd recommend to others.
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