How to Lose Your Mother cover art

How to Lose Your Mother

A Daughter's Memoir

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About this listen

Read by the author, Molly Jong-Fast.

An honest, heartbreaking and brutally funny memoir about losing a mother you never really had - and a comfort to anyone who loves someone who drives them crazy.

'I was just bowled over by this book' - Nigella Lawson

'A gripping memoir about mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, loss and healing . . . exquisitely relatable' - Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

'Conveys the mess, terror, loneliness and glory of familial love, in all its riveting complexity' - Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History
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Molly Jong-Fast is the daughter of acclaimed writer Erica Jong. How to Lose Your Mother is Molly’s delicious and despairing memoir about that intense mother–daughter relationship, a sometimes chaotic upbringing with a fame-hungry parent, and how that can really mess you up. But with her mother’s heartbreaking descent into dementia, and Molly’s realization that she is going to lose this remarkable woman, it is also a story of love, loss, confusion and deep grief.

Honest, moving and brutally funny, How to Lose Your Mother takes us behind the scenes of a fascinating and sometimes tumultuous family dynamic, revels in the gossipy details of Erica’s famous friends and enemies, and leaves us with a better understanding of our own most precious relationships.

Aging Parents Entertainment & Celebrities Parenting & Families Relationships Women Memoir Marriage Funny

Critic reviews

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's story is both uniquely specific and utterly, exquisitely relatable. (Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone)
By turns hilarious and heartbreaking. (Oprah Daily, The most anticipated books of 2025)
This deeply personal and powerful memoir, though witty and snarky, has a bittersweet tone and an often self-critical pose. Political journalist and TV commentator Jong–Fast [...] narrates with raw emotion, intense passion, and a propelling pace
Mesmerizing, intimate, wise, unputdownable, crazily honest, heartbreaking, funny, illuminating – Beautiful and painful at the same time, just like real life. (Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird)
An unflinching reflection on the relationship between mothers and daughters.
A riveting reckoning on the challenging ties many have to their parents . . . Both heartbreaking and humorous.
Conveys the mess, terror, loneliness and glory of familial love, in all its riveting complexity. (Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History )
Resisting tidy sentiment or easy answers, Jong-Fast dives headfirst into the often-difficult ambiguities of parent-child bonds. The results are stunning.
Sad, dishy and relatable.
The best book Jong-Fast could have written about the worst year of her life.
All stars
Most relevant
If you like a book about self-absorbed mothers, dementia and cancer thisbook is for you!

But be warned, the author sounds like she smokes 40 roll- ups a day, an extreme case of vocal fry? Plus her delivery sounds like a performance sometimes. Usually it would make perfect sense for the author of a memoir to read it, but I think an actor would have been better here.

Scratchy Voice

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I really loved this book and Molly's narration. A great insight into Erica Jong and their relationship.

Great Read

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The narration was awful. The story was boring. Off with it. This is the first book I've ever given up on.

Unbearable!!

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