How to Lose Your Mother - by Molly Jong-Fast (Hardcover)

About the Book

"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"--

Book Synopsis

"With propulsive humor and perspective on her annus horribilis, Jong-Fast achieves the memoir's transformative work of alchemy, arming us all with lines so good you won't just want to underline them, you will want to cut them out to share." --The Washington Post

"This raw, intimate memoir is a stunning portrait of difficult relationships and how we survive them." --People

"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.

Review Quotes

An Oprah Daily and Town & Country Best Book of the Summer

"Jong-Fast has put to words the tumult of the worst year of her life, captured and harnessed the experience so the rest of us can know that we are not alone. She's Job with a sense of humor. . . . With propulsive humor and perspective on her annus horribilis, Jong-Fast achieves the memoir's transformative work of alchemy, arming us all with lines so good you won't just want to underline them, you will want to cut them out to share." --The Washington Post

"Grief and rage coincide with comedy and uptown-literati charm. . . . Reading How to Lose Your Mother, one senses that the mother got the very daughter she wanted, even if she had no idea what to do with her when she arrived." --The New York Times

"Jong-Fast pours her heart and soul into this memoir of losing her famous mother. . . . She fights her way through the grief and rage with sharp self-awareness and a sense of humor that never deserts her. You think you've got aging parent problems? Let Jong-Fast tell you a story." --Oprah Daily

"Through all the chaos that Jong's past choices and current illness have unleashed on her life, Jong-Fast remains staunchly committed to the project being her own person: "I am sober and sort of sane and not my mother," she writes--words that feel almost like a guiding mantra for the book." --Vogue

"With deep feeling and clarity, Jong-Fast recalls coming of age with a parent whom she adored but sometimes felt at arms length and the surprising ways in which the parent-child relationship continues to change deep into adulthood." --Town & Country

"This raw, intimate memoir is a stunning portrait of difficult relationships and how we survive them." --People

"A gripping memoir about mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, loss and healing, and what it means to finally accept your past and become an adult. Despite being raised in the shadow of fame, Molly tells a story that is both uniquely specific and utterly, exquisitely relatable." --Lori Gottlieb

"Molly Jong-Fast conveys the mess, terror, loneliness and glory of familial love, in all its riveting complexity." --Claire Messud

"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

"I was just bowled over by this book." --Nigella Lawson

"Resisting tidy sentiment or easy answers, Jong-Fast dives headfirst into the often-difficult ambiguities of parent-child bonds. The results are stunning." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[Jong-Fast's] honesty, her self-awareness, and her grief keep you on her side, as well as her humor, understated, blunt, and sometimes black. . . . The best book Jong-Fast could have written about the worst year of her life." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)


"Jong-Fast has put to words the tumult of the worst year of her life, captured and harnessed the experience so the rest of us can know that we are not alone. She's Job with a sense of humor. . . . With propulsive humor and perspective on her annus horribilis, Jong-Fast achieves the memoir's transformative work of alchemy, arming us all with lines so good you won't just want to underline them, you will want to cut them out to share." --The Washington Post

"Grief and rage coincide with comedy and uptown-literati charm. . . . Reading How to Lose Your Mother, one senses that the mother got the very daughter she wanted, even if she had no idea what to do with her when she arrived." --The New York Times

"Jong-Fast pours her heart and soul into this memoir of losing her famous mother. . . . She fights her way through the grief and rage with sharp self-awareness and a sense of humor that never deserts her. You think you've got aging parent problems? Let Jong-Fast tell you a story." --Oprah Daily

"This raw, intimate memoir is a stunning portrait of difficult relationships and how we survive them." --People

"A gripping memoir about mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, loss and healing, and what it means to finally accept your past and become an adult. Despite being raised in the shadow of fame, Molly tells a story that is both uniquely specific and utterly, exquisitely relatable." --Lori Gottlieb

"Molly Jong-Fast conveys the mess, terror, loneliness and glory of familial love, in all its riveting complexity." --Claire Messud

"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

"I was just bowled over by this book." --Nigella Lawson

"Resisting tidy sentiment or easy answers, Jong-Fast dives headfirst into the often-difficult ambiguities of parent-child bonds. The results are stunning." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[Jong-Fast's] honesty, her self-awareness, and her grief keep you on her side, as well as her humor, understated, blunt, and sometimes black. . . . The best book Jong-Fast could have written about the worst year of her life." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

Molly Jong-Fast is a contributing writer at Vanity Fair, a political analyst at MSNBC News, and host of the podcast Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast. She is the author of three previous books. She lives in Manhattan.