The Book Review: On mothers and monogamy

Molly Jong-Fast's memoir about her own famous mother.

View in browser|nytimes.com June 3, 2025 Molly Jong-Fast at her home in Manhattan. In her unsparing memoir of her mother's decline she is, in a way, just following her mother's advice, which was: "Why bother writing a memoir if you're not going to tell the whole story?" Sara Messinger for The New York Times By Joumana Khatib Dear readers, I'm writing this newsletter with two "m" words in mind — mothers and monogamy — and I'm hot-potatoing both between my hands, trying to decide which feels more radioactive in the quiet leas of literature. Over the weekend my colleague Alexandra Alter profiled Molly Jong-Fast, whose new memoir about her mother seems practically predestined, given how freely Jong-Fast's mom, the "Fear of Flying" author Erica Jong, invoked her daughter's most private moments in her own writing. Naturally, that practice evinced resentment, and worse, from Molly, whose book is called "How to Lose Your Mother." She knows some readers will see its portrayal of Jong, a cultural icon who is now in her 80s and has dementia, as an act of literary retribution. And Molly doesn't entirely disagree. "I sold out Erica Jong," she said in an interview, "but it's sort of in honor of her." I've previously expressed my appetite for completist reading — the practice of ingesting an author's entire catalog — as a way to understand a writer's development. What's really interesting is how, taken together, the works of Erica Jong and Molly Jong-Fast complement and contradict each other. As Alexandra notes in her profile of Molly: "They fit together awkwardly like pieces of a broken vessel — the overall shape coheres, but the jagged edges don't always align." That metaphor, as it happens, neatly describes another relationship on my mind: the fictional romance between Tanja and Jerome, who star in a recently translated German novel I quite liked. As a rule I'm not drawn to the fates and fortunes of my millennial peers, but Leif Randt's emotionally stunted duo really did enamor me. (I've delayed mentioning the title of Randt's novel, "Allegro Pastel," because it's pompous and awful; please don't let that dissuade you from reading the book.) Tanja is a successful novelist while Jerome is a web designer who lives in the suburbs. Theirs isn't necessarily a relationship you'd kill to emulate, but it has the easy sheen of two people who care just enough about each other. I loved the writing in this novel and finished it in a weekend. Your mileage may vary, depending on your tolerance for ponderous, heartsore emails, recounted ketamine fits and German ideas about monogamy. If my descriptions of "Allegro Pastel" are chafing against your innermost feelings, maybe another m-word book could do the trick? One with marmosets, perhaps, or an uneasy stay at Mansfield Park? See you Friday. P.S.: We're still harvesting questions — about the inner workings of the Book Review, the publishing industry or anything else literature-adjacent — to answer on an upcoming episode of the podcast. Write in with yours by emailing books@nytimes.com. WHAT TO READ Editors' Choice 10 New Books We Recommend This Week Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times. The New York Times 24 Books Coming in June Fiction by Taylor Jenkins Reid and V.E. Schwab; a memoir of a year without sex; new thrillers from James Patterson and S.A. Cosby; and more. The New York Times 21 Nonfiction Books Coming This Summer How did streetwear become high fashion? Why are there so many serial killers in the Pacific Northwest? Prize-winning writers tackle these questions, while memoirists consider celibacy, spycraft and Erica Jong. 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