“In the mornings,” Adrian tells her at one point, “I can never remember your name” (227). She’s dreamed of finding “a perfect man whose mind and body were equally fuckable” (91) and in this seemingly impossible search for love she’s avoided defining her own identity and desires. Without one I felt lost as a dog without a master rootless, faceless, undefined” (78).Īnd it’s true – without a man she does lack definition, at least for herself (less so for the reader). I simply couldn’t imagine myself without a man. I was like a boat that always had to have a port of call. No sooner did I imagine myself running away from one man than I envisaged myself tying up with another. She thinks she may have found one in Adrian Goodlove, but in pursuing him she has to face her titular fear of flying – both a literal fear and a fear of freedom, of being single.Īs imperfect as her marriage might be, Isadora clings to its security and is not devoid of feelings of love and loyalty to Bennett.Īlso, she is more dependent on men than she would like to be: Isadora Wing is frustrated by her unhappy marriage to Bennett and longs for the elusive ‘zipless fuck’ – a ‘pure’ sexual encounter, an indulgence without strings, without power games. Or rather, the novel feels like the strong origins of a genre that has since become watered down and weak.
Now I found myself in the ideal circumstances to really enjoy it.įear of Flying has a chick lit plot pulled off with more flair, honesty and insight than that normally fluffy genre seems able to muster. I’d had Fear of Flying on my shelf for a few years and had started it a few times without finishing.
The best thing I can say about it is that it made me long for something far bolder, more complex, and better written. Whatever its noble intentions it made feminism look like a new age joke. In a recent reading challenge, I read a chick lit novel whose idea of feminism was to avoid men and portray women as either victims of their unhappy marriages or single and thus empowered to almost mythical proportions. Fear of Flying by Erica Jong ( New American Library )
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