American author Erica Jong wrote the mega best-selling novel “Fear Of Flying” in 1973 and the non-fiction “Fear Of Fifty” in 1994 and now she comes up with her 11th novel “Fear Of Dying” which was published in 2015. Although a novel, it is clearly inspired by the author’s loss of her two aged parents and the experience of her fourth marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The narrator – like Jong, a New Yorker and Jewish – is Vanessa Wonderman, a television actor who is now aged 60 and married to a rich man of 80 for 15 years. In the course of the year described in the story, there is much going on in her life: both her elderly parents are close to death, even her dog has a terminal condition, her husband is about to suffer a near-death experience, and her daughter is pregnant. This elegantly written and witty work explains how she navigates such challenges, in doing so addressing some major issues of life and death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In spite of everything else that is going on in her life, Vanessa signs up to a sex site on the Internet. Why? “I was too edgy, too curious, too afraid of dying”<\/em> and “I am in a rage against age”. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n On life, she insists: “There is no substitute for touch. To be alive is to crave it.” <\/em>On illness, she observes: “You can go from the country of the well to the country of the sick in a split second.” <\/em>On death, she opines: “We all secretly believe in our own immortality. Since we cannot imagine the loss of individual consciousness, we cannot possibly imagine death.”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" American author Erica Jong wrote the mega best-selling novel “Fear Of Flying” in 1973 and the non-fiction “Fear Of Fifty” in 1994 and now she comes up with her 11th novel “Fear Of Dying” which was published in 2015. Although a novel, it is clearly inspired by the author’s loss of her two aged parents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24954"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24967,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24954\/revisions\/24967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}