Fear of Flying

Apparently this book is really famous. It's by Erica Jong, it was first published in the 1970s...71, I think, and I had only heard that it was vaguely connected to women's lib and that it was considered a classic.

So, it was pretty weird, but I can also see why it's a classic. It has a lot of wise and brutally honest things to say about women and men and gender inequality and so on and so forth. But, be forwarned, a lot of people find the language shocking, and there's a lot of talk about $ex. Some of it was obviously dated, some just plain ol' bizarre, and I'm still not 100% sure of my final verdict.

I will say this, though. It was so real, the author's voice was so authentic, that I kept forgetting that it was supposed to be a novel. After I finished it, I read the afterword and figured out that quite a bit of it is based on the author's life story, so I figure that really helped, but I have never read ANYTHING else where the protagonist was so vivid, where it was so hard to keep the author and the main character separate in my head.

Very different, strange, heartbreaking, funny at times, great flow of writing. Don't know what else to say about it but that. Try it for yourself, or don't.