Erica Jong is known as a feminist writer. In my mind, though, she simply writes stories from a woman's point of view. This one explores how woman balance their need for career success with their need for loving relationships, particularly those between mothers and daughters.

Like Jong but this left me confused. The genogram at beginning was no help what with characters changing names as well as being named the same. I finally had to make my own chart just to keep it straight. It took some work, then I was able to enjoy.

Another book about the complicated Mother-Daughter relationship. This book delves into a strange phenomena that I have experienced with my mother...each generation wants their daughter to have more freedom, more opportunity, and more choices, yet in the end the mother often grows resentful of her daughter who has had those choices, opportunities and freedoms that she did not have. Instead of being proud, the mother cannot identify with her daughter and a rift forms.

I've read other Erica Jong books which I loved. This one... not so much. I am not sure why, but it just didn't grab me at all.

Have not read this yet but am interested to hear what others think about this book/author.

A story of a Jewish family or rather the women in NY. It was good. It made me think about the different generations and how "a woman's heart holds many secrets" to paraphrase the Titanic quote. (I said it was good in this review, but I had totally forgotten that I had read it.)

Boring chased by slutty sensationalism. The end.

Un viaggio lungo un secolo, alla scoperta dell’America e dell’Europa e della vita di quattro donne straordinarie, voci di quattro epoche diverse, che illustrano i grandi cambiamenti, la bellezza e le brutture del Novecento.

Sarah.
Salome.
Sally.
Sara.

Un libro, questo, che racconta il rapporto madre-figlia, il potere della discendenza, della memoria. Quattro donne che hanno fatto le loro scelte, giuste e sbagliate, che hanno subito l’influenza del loro tempo, e che hanno riscattato la figura femminile, che non è più predestinata esclusivamente al matrimonio; il matrimonio rappresenta UNA delle possibilità.

Erica Jong sa essere profonda senza dover adottare necessariamente uno stile altisonante. Nella narrazione pone diversi interrogativi tutt’altro che scontati, spaziando da temi come la sessualità femminile alla religione (ebraica in questo caso), dalla malattia mentale ai motivi dell’antisemitismo e dello sterminio della Shoah.

Vi consiglio di leggerlo! Mi ha tenuta incollata alle pagine per tutto il tempo!!

This book tells the story of four generations of Jewish women. The first leaves Russia during a pogrom, the second is a flapper during the 20's in Paris, the third is a famous folk singer in the 60's, and the fourth is a historian researching her family history, which is how we learn about all of the others. It's a story of relationships and of history and how they intertwine.

I must be not getting something about Jong here, since people write essays on this book whereas I can only come up with a one-liner, but to me this reads like a bad soft-porn pastiche of Lyudmila Ulitskaya.

Like her views on mother/daughter/grandmother relationshops. So many ways of veiwing these relationships, what differnces they can make in our lives, if they existed or uf they are lacking. How would my grandmother, mother and I have been differnt if my great grandmother hadn't died when my grandmother was a small child? So many of us have so little information about the women whose dna we share.

Normally I find Erica Jong to be an interesting writer, but this book was not one of her better ones. The first part of the book starts off okay, but then nosedives through each successive generation. The plot also seems to be rushed after the halfway point, when it feels like Jong just got bored with her characters and hurried them to their conclusions. And while smut is a hallmark of Jong's work, it usually has a purpose in her plots. Here it felt like it was just thrown in to make the book reach a set amount of pages.