Volume 24, Number 7 · April 28, 1977
Hard Hit Women
By Diane Johnson
How to Save Your Own Life
by Erica Jong
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 310 pp., $8.95
A Book of Common Prayer
by Joan Didion
Simon and Schuster, 272 pp., $8.95
Lover
by Bertha Harris
Daughters, Inc, 214 pp., $4.50 (paper)
About the response to Erica Jong's new novel, How to Save Your Own Life, it is hard to guess which emotions will prevail on the part of people who admired or liked her exuberant Fear of Flying. Stupefaction, chagrin, the feeling of having been had? Or pity? The feeling that it is after all Erica Jong who has been had, who has trusted people too far, as in a scene from a horrid film in which thin, cruel sorority girls tell an unlovable fat girl over and over that she is talented and loved, that she writes like Chaucer and John Keats, ply her with presents and compliments about her beauty, encourage her to take off all her clothes and confide her most fatuous secrets: then they all laugh and turn away.
Review, 3259 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |