An Oprah Daily Best Summer Read of 2025 “Molly Jong-Fast’s memoir is mesmerizing intimate
wise unputdownable crazily honest heartbreaking funny illuminating—beautiful and painful
at the same time just like real life.” —Anne Lamott 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.
