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Not NEARLY as entertaining as Fear of Flying or How to Save Your Own Life, which was disappointing. Isadora grows up, and its pretty boring and sad. I guess thats reality, though.

I was in high school when Fear of Flying came out and reading it was a bit of a rite of passage. Most of us, lacking any actual sex scenes of our own, read about Isadora's without any informed idea as to their accuracy. I read Parachutes & Kisses in my mid-twenties, and it has a special spot in my memory for how accurate it was. Not about sex. To be honest, I don't remember what I thought of the sex in the book at all. However, in my mid-twenties I gave birth to my daughter by C-section, right at the height of everyone extolling the glories of natural childbirth. Stories, both true and fictional, about natural childbirth were, pardon the pun, popping out all over the place. There was a judgmental attitude towards women who ended up taking painkillers at all during labour and who ended up having C-sections. It was easy to feel disappointed, cheated even, that I ended up having a C-section after 50 hours of labour. Implicitly, I had failed and my body had failed me. About six months later I picked up Parachutes & Kisses and could tell early on in the story that at some point a description of Isadora giving birth was in store. I braced myself for the inevitable natural childbirth scene, the "summitting Everest without oxygen while listening to Beethoven's 9th symphony" combination of accomplishment and awe that such descriptions were loaded with at the time. Instead, I felt so grateful when Isadora, after a long labour, had a C-section in a passage written by someone who has either had one, or talked to someone who has. Jong got it right, down to how much you feel during one and describing how much longer it takes to get all the various layers stitched up than it does to get the baby out. As an author, Jong could have shaped Isadora's story any way she chose, and she chose, for whatever reason, to go against the trend of the time by including a C-section. So, although not a particularly memorable book otherwise, this novel gets an extra star from me for the much-needed-at-the-time sense of validation those few pages gave me.

Erica Jong is a difficult writer for me to read. The best way I can explain it is to say that her rhythms and mine do not mesh well. But much of her writing is inspired. I give her extra points for prose that frequently surprises me and makes me smile.

I read this book in 1985 when I was sixteen. My High School English teacher recommended it.

Beautifully written as always for Jong but disappointing follow up to How to Save your own life. I understand the pain of her divorce but instead of an introspective novel she continues to look outside herself for comfort.

No Fear of Flying but still very funny, intelligent and charming.

Women can get better and more passionate as they age.

This book was a magnificent piece of literature, IS a magnificent piece of literature. It was very much so love at first page, but like almost every single love story, romance or erotic or sexually related affair (very much so like the ones depicted in this book) it was not un-complicated. <3

When I read the text on the back of the cover of this book, her encounter with an actor at a health club was mentioned. That didn't happen until way after 200 pages! The center of the story was rather her many relations with different men, her tensed relationship with her ex-husband and the father of her daughter Amanda, and the series of babysitters she had and later had to fire for some reason! It was not what I had expected at first, I thought I had a "typical" (in a good way!) novel about a relationship between an author and an actor in the 80s (since that's when it was written and that's when it was set), but I instead got a philosophical very much "stream-of-consciousness" written, sexological and brutally bare and honest mind-diary and nearly life-long story, with many side-tracks and side-events but still it did not feel like that much happened in the book. (It seems nearly self-biographical in a way, which is a very interesting and beautiful trait this book has).

Don't get me wrong, I really liked it, but it was a surprise to me, and it got slow to read at certain parts. But it was A JOURNEY! Through poetry and sex, space and time, artistry and life's many, many challenges. It took me a while to finish, and after having read it for quite a long time, I was a little tired of it. But I really really loved Isadora, and the Venice, Italy-set ending part of the book was beautiful. <3 And it was so interesting to follow this lovely woman, Isadora, on her promiscuous and sexual journey in search for a love that will last, and for drugs that will take the edge of things in a life much too complicated that what she had expected, mainly caused by her a**hole ex-husband Josh (and a very sloppy economical advisor).

All in all, it was a good book. A GREAT book when you know what it's all about. And it had charts of glass in it mirroring the thoughts and mind, and LIFE, of so many artists in the world. Us artists... <3

AND BESIDES! I frankly think this is a book that everyone should read, as part of the common education if you please. Like you know, common knowledge. It is a masterpiece of a work indeed, despite it's long passages that to me seemed dull and boring and juts didn't do it FOR ME. Other than that, the language, the story, that runs so deep within Isadora's soul and search for love, passion, compassion and identity after her grandpa'as passing, it's delicious. The sex is ravishing, unique, authentic and extremely in-your-face in the best way possible. It is a shocking book, especially since it was released over 40 years ago. And I think if it would be released today, it would cause a stir yet again. Even more maybe! And it has a strong sentiment of art and poetry, fiction in the mirrors of life, art in the casting spells of misfortune in everybody's everyday life, that has to be read by mor epeople of today! It is nothing like a modern book, nothing at all, and it could be a great literary experience and a well-needed sexual, sweaty, hard cardio-workout for the brains of today's youth, whose only reading pleasures seems to be simple Instagrampost-captions, Snapchat-conversations and articles about what is and is not allowed in the communistic, radical rulebook of the Gen Z, and the establishment of the Cancel Culture-nuclear bomb.

The main reason I'm not giving this book just one star is because I didn't completely loathe it, but I certainly did not like it very much. So perhaps I'd give it 1 1/2 stars.

Ms. Jong should've stopped writing about Isadora White Stollerman Wing Ace when readers only knew her as Isadora Wing in "Fear of Flying." The more I've read about Isadora the more love sick, desperate, needy, man-hungry, and all around annoying she became.

I think one of the major faults of "Parachutes and Kisses" is that the final book (I sincerely hope there will be NO MORE Isadora Wing novels) isn't narrated from Isadora's POV like "Flying" and "How to Save a Life" were. This narrator is repetitive (how many times do I have to read about Isadora's heartache over her latest ex-husband, how she uses men/sex to try and heal the wound, and how many deaths she had to deal with in one year?), likes to quote European or 18th/19th century lit WAY too much, and loves to talk about Isadora's trendy, fame, and money filled lifestyle now that she's a successful author. She schmoozes, she wines & dines, she has gratuitous sex...a lot, and she's somewhat neglectful of her daughter when it comes to her need of being satisfied, albeit, fulfilled by another man. The Postscript (from 2006) by the author says that this book was to be an ode to the younger man helping an older woman get through divorce. Well, if that was the point this book could've been cut in half and we could've stopped going through her merry-go-round of lovers to her finding Mr. Right Now. This was an issue of mine with "Life" was that Isadora was having so much sex and not finding fulfillment that it was one of her last lovers to help her get through her heartbreak and here we follow the same methodology when I'd hope at her age other things like her daughter would take precedent.

And don't get me started on the chapter about all the crappy nannies she settled with just because she couldn't deal with finding another one and deemed even the most unfit one "not that bad."

In the midst of all the name dropping, old-school literary references, fornication after fornication, wallowing in self-pity and "Jewish guilt", and unnecessary racial stereotypes like her reference to having to show off her money like ghetto Blacks I was disappointed in the final installment of the Isadora Wing series.

For me "Fear of Flying" definitely hit a nerve and made this character relatable. In "How to Save a Life" she was somewhat relatable but very whiny and sexually active as a way to attempt to get satisfaction and really jab at those she had failed relationships with (foray into same-sex trist was aimed at her mother) and the other ones with men were to get back at her husband at the time, Bennett. This time around she used sex to attempt to heal herself because she "needs" a man in her life. Not to say that that's a bad thing but when you have a child to care for and other responsibilities perhaps a regular lay doesn't have to be at the forefront of one's mind. By this book she is no longer that relatable woman, but a highly irritating one.

After reading two mediocre books about Isadora, I'm ready to go back to the start where I fell in like with her in the first place.

I love her writing. I just read this one. I don't see her books as only for women or the young, as I'm male, almost 70. I most liked her comments on fame and being an author, no doubt based on her experience.

Still sexy, still insightful, still fresh to the flesh.