Fear of Flying Summary
Erica Jong

Fear of Flying Summary

Like many quasi-autobiographical first novels, Fear of Flying is a bildungsroman whose central theme is the search for self-discovery. Isadora Wing re-examines and reinterprets her personal history in an effort to define herself as a daughter, a woman, a Jew and a writer. Structurally and philosophically the process resembles psychoanalysis — but traditional psychiatry is also a focus of the book's iconoclasm. The psychoanalysts Isadora knows operate on the basis of theoretical abstractions...

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