Any Woman's Blues

This book was amazing. It teaches us about self love, overcoming addiction, and how to be staring as a woman. Erica is very blunt and may make her readers uncomfortable because of the way she emphasizes sex, but it is real. What women go through just to find love and show a man how capable of loving him she is. I can't wait to read more by this author.

Constant whine fest. Too many dated references to things I didn't feel like looking up. It really is a novel of obsession, not a novel about obsession. I see the difference now.

(Rating 3.5) —- Well the opening of this makes you instantly dislike the main character Leila Sands, she genuinely says that ‘the nazis could not have invented a more cunning crematorium’ when she is describing that her desire turns her to ash and then in the same paragraph compares her lust for Dart to the ‘deprivation of prisoners of war’ because they haven’t had sex in 7 hours. What!?!?!?!? So straight away she comes across as very melodramatic and narcissistic. At first I didn’t think this was supposed to be ironic but she was so often ridiculous throughout the book that I thought maybe this behaviour was on the nose, that the reader is supposed to be in on the joke that is Leila. If this is not the case then she is truly one annoying character and the tone is totally off!! Not only is she unlikeable because of her melodrama and narcissism but she is also extremely pretentious, ungrateful and self obsessed. She bemoans her life and how she was rebellious but is not self aware enough to know that she is in fact very privileged.

Saying all this, I do have to admit that she does become more likeable the more you read. I felt very conflicted about this because I genuinely started off hating her but at some point this changes. Yes, she is still her self involved and melodramatic self but you also see that she is tough on herself and her faults and in fact she is actually just really struggling. And by the end Leila shows that she has finally grown up and accepted that she needs to take responsibility for her own happiness and not find it in a man so that level of character growth is great. Only negative about this was that I felt this growth was rushed as literally a couple of pages before she was repeating the same mistakes and was obsessing over a new man and clinging to him to make her life mean something. Yes she did recognise it this time and chose to remove herself from him but it still happened.

Of course this book is jammed packed with the societal ideas and expectations of a women’s place in the world at that particular time in history (after the boomers) and I thought this was explored quite well and was very interesting. Especially the parts about how if she was born before the war she would have known her place and been content with it like a lot of women before her but because she was born later all she knew was that she wanted more out of life but that she had no one to be influenced by as no one had lived a different lifestyle yet so she was lost and had no one to teach her. I feel like this could apply to a lot of women her age during this time and this was an interesting discussion.

I think it’s important to talk about the narrative style in this as it really does blur the lines between art and the artist. This is basically an author (Chung) writing a book that is ‘written’ by a character who is an author (Wing) from the first person perspective of a character who is an artist (Sand). It takes a second to get your head round it but I think it’s pulled off very well. It’s very original, or original for me anyway, and I liked that the foreword and afterword added more questions - like is it Wing presenting another version of herself? Is it actually Chung writing about herself via Wing/Sands? Is it both simultaneously as every character by an author has some element of themselves in? It really created some great conversations regarding authorship, identity and creativity.

I know this isn’t a popular opinion but I actually liked the interruptions/inserts from the ‘author’ Isadora Wing as they are often arguing with Leila or making mocking comments relating to something that she had just said. I felt like it added a new dynamic that I had never read before and I thought these snippets were perfectly timed to my thoughts. When I would roll my eyes or scoff, so did Isadora Wing, and I was happy to know that my frustrations were intentional and I liked being ‘in’ on the process. It’s a very clever idea and I think it’s pulled off really well and I appreciated it.

this was an easier read than fear of flying, a little more structured, a little less 70s. interesting to see the difference and similarities in author's voice and themes. jong's women are very alive and attacking their lives to get the most out of it - wanting and thinking about how to make the best/most of it. i like that about her books. ask for more. ask for it all. screw up burn out and still ask for more. not all cultures raise women to even think any of that is possible.

and who knows if it really is - but to not even try...

This book relies a lot on the Fear of flying. There's nothing new, nothing more. Actually, there's less. Fear of flying was more intelligent, you could notice Jong's wittiness, and ideas were very new to the era.

Arguments:
-This is a flopped try of a novel inside a novel, what is also redundant for the story.
-A storyline is the same premise over and over again.
-Tries to be poetic in descriprions of sex and female soul, but fails very much.
-Events are inbeliveable, persons are caricatures, relations are baseless.
-After a while, you just want to finish this nonsense.

This one has more structure as a novel than Fear of flying.

Sexually voracious man leaves woman. Woman goes nuts, tries to deal with obsessions. Rinse and repeat.

Liberating!

I like Erica Jong's work and for that reason I struggled on for three weeks trying to like this book to the bitter end. I skimmed the last pages......glad to be done and wondering what I was missing? Maybe it was because i loved Fear of Flying so much that this book was such a disapointment. I just couldnt relate, or understand.