Product Description

Compulsive daydreamer Isadora Wing doesn't want much - just to be free and to find the perfect, guiltless, zipless sexual encounter. Pursuing this ideal across two continents, she discovers just how hard it can be to make one's dreams come true. Though Isadora fears flying (in all possible senses), she forces herself to keep travelling, risking her marriage and even her life for her own special brand of liberation. This intensely witty and exuberant novel is about how she achieves her freedom and loses her fear.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61494 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Fay Weldon
A stirring book of fable and fantasy...outrageously readable.

Anthony Burgess
Fresh, innovative, ingenious...moving. The imagination of the poet she essentially is strikes deep. I recommend it with all my heart.

Cosmopolitan
An amazing tour de force.

Customer Reviews

A potent mix of intellect and sexuality
Ths is an outstanding book written by a very liberated woman of the 70s - but while that is nearly 40 years ago it still packs a punch. The sexual content of this book is what it is most famous (or infamous) for with its tales of sexual promiscuity and coarse language that is entirely in keeping with the events it describes. But just as important as this, for me, is the erudition of the writer. She is very well-educated/read and augments the sexual tales of the main character Isadora Wing with copious apposite references to Shakespeare, music, etc. The pace of the book is often thrilling as it describes events so rapidly and intellectually as well as providing insight to the sexually liberated female mind.

I am dubious as to whether the book is largely fictional as the detail and intensity are entirely consistent with being biographical, if not autobiographical. Nevertheless it really is excellent brain food and a potent mix of intellect and sexuality.

Erica flies only so high
This is not a book for those who are easily shocked - it may date back to the 70s, but it pulls no punches, and, for example, the main character refers to parts of her body in very direct terms.

Although I enjoyed reading it, I doubt whether the material in it all actually holds together well as a novel. In particular, the chapter entitled The Madman (chapter 12?) registered with me as very striking, but it did not follow on where the previous chapter left off, and this is where the disjointedness of the book began. The chapter is given credit at the front of the book for having been published in a magazine, albeit in a different version, and, unfortunately, that is how it reads in the context of the book to that point - it is in a different style, and, although the content is very good, it does not fit in. The two or three chapters that follow it also do not, with the result that, whereas this may not be as much of a problem as the one hundred and fifty odd pages of diary in Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall that breaks that novel's back, it is then not possible to resume, as Jong, seeks to do, the narrative approach that preceded this group.

With this (major) exception, the book is very well written, and Jong shows the breadth of her reading by making literary references that are utterly convincing in the mouth of her heroine, rather than, as such allusions can be, for the sake of it or to impress the reader and/or make him or her feel knowledageable that they have been identified.

Give this book a go, but it is questionable whether it lives up to some of the more extreme claims that have been made for it, however well it addresses sexual and other issues, because the characterization is not wholly convincing: for example, a British psychiatrist who is a devotee of R. D. Laing might have said 'ducks' all the time as term of endearment, but I rather doubt it...

A journey of discovery
This book tells one woman's story of searching for freedom, mainly through sexual experience and fantasy. In many ways it is the female equivalent of Philip Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint". Written in the early 1970's I was concerned that the book might be dated, describing a restriction on women no longer relevant, at least in Western society. However, whilst the book certainly isn't shocking in its sexual content 30 years on it is still relevant and insightful. Most importantly it contains far more than the sexual adventures and fantasies of the main character. The relationships of Isadora with her different husbands are subtle and gripping. In particular I found the description of the mental breakdown of the first husband powerfully written. The reflections on what these relationships and others have revealed to her about herself are stimulating. Finally, whilst there is a lot of analysis there is a lot of humour too. I would strongly recommend this book for anyone who likes to reflect on the human condition -some things never date. My favourite thing Isadora learned: "You did not have to apologize for wanting to own your own soul. Your soul belonged to you - for better or for worse. When all was said and done, it was all you had."