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Fear of Dying

Review

Fear of Dying

Vanessa Wonderman has led a privileged life, and she knows it. She has enjoyed a prolific acting career, most notably as powerful, manipulative and bitchy Blair on a long-running soap opera. Although happily married to Asher, a super wealthy businessman 15 years her senior, she longs for something more. Facing his life-threatening illness, her own parents’ mortality and the prospect of grandmotherhood, she’s still longing for sexual escape: “My husband and I read the obituaries together more often than we have sex.”

Recklessly, Vanessa visits Zipless.com, a website inspired by a decades-old novel by her best friend, Isadora Wing. (Isadora is the narrator of FEAR OF FLYING, Erica Jong’s groundbreaking first novel published in 1973.) Isadora shocked the world with her fantasies of anonymous, passionate sex for sex’s sake, and Zipless offers the sensual seeker a way to connect with others of their ilk. Vanessa posts the following: “Happily married woman with extra erotic energy seeks happily married man to share same. Come celebrate Eros one afternoon per week. Discretion guaranteed by playful, pretty, imaginative woman. Send email and recent picture. New York area.” At first she backs away from the many responses, but later defends her impulse: “It was either that or spiritual bliss.”

"Having been influenced, impressed and entertained by FEAR OF FLYING so many years ago, I had hoped for more from this novel. It is saucy, sassy and full of bon mots, but rather than supporting the story, they smothered it."

Vanessa spends a lot of time musing about death and aging in hospitals and at her parents’ apartment, as first her father dies and then her mother. In between, Asher suffers a heart attack and goes through a lengthy convalescence. Together they explore some of the many solutions to his erectile dysfunction: “We were the generation that never gave up. Orgasm was in our bill of rights.” There are more questions than answers, and Vanessa poses them to us relentlessly: “How did I get here? How did I get to be Vanessa Wonderman? And what did Vanessa Wonderman want? Love, sex, immortality --- all the things we can never have. What is the arc of the plot of one’s life? I want! I want!” 

Sex and death; death and sex. Add God into the mix, and you have the themes of this breezy confessional novel. Vanessa dallies with extramarital sex, but as her experience of loss increases and her love for her grandson explodes, she turns back to her husband. The result is a trip with Asher to India, where, due to India’s embrace of Western soap operas and movies, she is still famous: “I had wished to be young again, and somehow by coming to India, I was.” She and Asher insist on visiting a remote, scary cave in Goa, a cave that their drivers refuse to enter, where they find…you guessed it, spiritual bliss. 

The Indian women tell her that she (or rather Blair) gave them permission to be tough yet feminine. They ask her to be their guru. “‘I am trying to tell you that you are already your own guru,’ I said. ‘You are strong and powerful. You only have to know how powerful and full of life you are!’”

Having been influenced, impressed and entertained by FEAR OF FLYING so many years ago, I had hoped for more from this novel. It is saucy, sassy and full of bon mots, but rather than supporting the story, they smothered it.

Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol on September 11, 2015

Fear of Dying
by Erica Jong

  • Publication Date: September 6, 2016
  • Genres: Fiction
  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
  • ISBN-10: 1250065925
  • ISBN-13: 9781250065926