I didn't know what I was getting myself into before reading this. It was given to me by a friend who's very sure this is my type of reading. This is the first novel I read from Erica Jong and my friend was right, I loved it!

I skipped the "book within a book" table of contents as there were some spoilers there. I'm always looking for something new; whenever I get too engrossed reading the same genre for say, 5 books, I need a breath of fresh air and this story provided it.

What an adventure it was! In the beginning it was written in the third person, but the author shifted the perspective to Fanny's. She tells her own story, with every grain of truth, as opposed to the sensational and fabricated accounts by other writers. This could also be a memoir, but the most important reason she wrote her life story is for her daughter Belinda (who's but a name), who wants to explore the real world.

The story was fast-paced, and the events happened in a year or so where our fun and fearless heroine Fanny is introduced. I'm not going to spoil anything here, but all I can say is the ending was very well-written. Fanny's journeys and meetings with the other characters really taught her all she needs to know about life in general. Some of the events were predictable, but that doesn't lessen the excitement the story evoked.

This novel is a roller coaster ride with a lot of loops. The sex was sometimes erotic, and sometimes extreme I was glad she didn't write it in detail. There were some kinkiness I could tolerate but the time with Captain Whitehead was really despicable.

There were dramatic character developments and compelling mysteries that I just couldn't put it down. It was narrated fluently and it didn't drag. Fanny was very consistent in her growth from a lady to a woman of the world. Her relationship with Lancelot stood the test of time; in this narrative there was a lot of loss, regret, hope, despair, lust, and most importantly, love.

What I liked about this novel aside from the colorful story, is Fanny's character. She's very intelligent and forward-thinking. This novel depicts the timeless struggle of women for some measure of equality or empowerment. It was set in the time of the slave trades, colonies. I liked how the author used Fanny's character as a symbol for women writers in those times, and their sad plight. It was great how at that day and age, even the issue on race was tackled.

I loved the immense emotions that ran through this book. The ending tied loose ends, was a happy one, and very enlightening. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The BEST!

Decades and decades ago, when I was an undergrad at university, we school dormitory girlfriends passed around a well-worn paperback copy of John Cleland's FANNY HILL: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, published in 1748-1749. Ah, yes, it was a more innocent time. We got our porn from the classics, not from films like Debbie Does Dallas.

When Erica Jong put out her feminist version of Fanny in 1980, I was busy raising kids and teaching school in Latin America and missed it entirely, only finding it recently on Amazon at a bargain price. So I had to get it, if only for old times' sake, and to see how Jong's Fanny improved (or not) upon the original Georgian one.

I'm sorry to say that, although impressed by Jong's writing style imitative of 1700s publications and also happy with the fact that our Fanny here is not such a pushover for the male sexual organ and takes much more control of her own life, I was bored. There's too much detail, especially when we get to all the sailing on pirate ships.

So I skipped bunches of this, probably missing some intelligent and erudite references to Georgian people, ideas and culture. But life's too short, IMO, to spend it having my mind numbed by so much verbiage. I do admit to enjoying meeting up with Alexander Pope, William Hogarth, and Cleland himself, making a visit to the Hellfire Club, seeing the contrast between the early comfortable aristocratic life Fanny led and her life after ending up on the seedier side of society, making the acquaintance of a group of feminist witches and a group of highwaymen, and more.

So Fanny meets up with some actual historical personages of the times and also many more fictional ones. There are interesting discussions of witches, slavery, democracy, equality, and even some fun etymology of terms such as Jolly Roger, buccaneers, etc. If I had been in a more patient frame of mind I would have read this more carefully, but, as it was, the payoff for spending more time on this did not seem greater to me than the payoff of getting on with my life.

Three stars for this because I did enjoy Jong's Fanny being less of a pushover and less of a patsy than Cleland's. Well, feminism was coming into its own (kinda) in the 1980s. One would expect a more woke Fanny. Besides, Cleland was a guy. What do they really know about women?

3.5