Inventing Memory: A Novel of Mothers and Daughters

What can one say about a book which tugs at their very heartstrings and own memories. Having been brought up on the Lower East Side and familiar with many of the places Ms. Jong described to say nothing of the people, I found this read wonderful.And through her three main women charatcers, it is as if she tells the story of thes Jewish women living, working and assimilating to the United States of then and now.Do not miss this book - you will close it with a sigh and think often about the characters too.

Erica Jong blasts into the immigrant novel genre in her book Inventing Memory A Novel of Mothers and Daughters. As only she can do, Jong intertwines this feminist history of four generations of Jewish-American women as they strive to learn who they are, where they came from, and the men that influenced their lives both positively and negatively. This eternal man-woman struggle pulses through the novel from beginning to end, and is laden with Jongs' usual dose of sexual heaviness. Both mothers and daughters learn from their quests to truly know their ancestors, that they are all just synthesized versions of those that came before them. The "memory" that is invented in this novel, is one that allows all these women to survive in a male-dominated world while maintaining what is most precious to the, their feminity.

What a wonderful work of the heart and soul... I finished reading this book this morning at 5:22 after a night of only putting it down to think of my own hidden blessed memories - turning on the light and reading until the last word could only be the last word... Bravo to Erica, her daughter and her daughter's daughters!

Erica Jong captures the mother/daughter, love/hate relationship well. Her book appears to be more about not inventing memories, but how we all perceive our past differently, and how we are all a product of our ancestors. The whole mother/daughter relationship is not completely realized until the daughter becomes a mother herself. Her depiction of how a woman struggles to find her identity in a male society, and that she has to understand and be happy with herself before she can be happy with a man, continues to be a prevalent problem in our society.