Molly Jong-Fast is the daughter of novelist and writer Erica Jong. That fact alone does not quite merit sitting down to read the memoirs of Ms. Jong-Fast. But her life so far (all 26 years of it) has, in fact, been curiously full of nutty episodes, colorful characters, and personal problems – enough to make the 192 pages of her life story worth it. Plus, there’s a sexy title: “The Sex Doctors in the Basement: True Stories From a Semi-Celebrity Childhood.”

Ms. Jong-Fast has an unusually wry sense of humor mixed with a sweet-and-sour sarcastic tone. She’s also got a heavily jaundiced take on having grown up in Manhattan. It’s hard enough to live here, let alone grow up in the shadow of a famous mother who made a career out of her sexual fantasies. To make matters worse, as a youngster, Ms. Jong-Fast committed the one sin that is unforgivable in this town: She was overweight. Worse yet, she didn’t care.

As she cuttingly observes: “Anywhere else in the world, when you are fat, you are exactly that, but here in Manhattan fatness can only be a sign that you are in fact mentally ill.”

Which is partly why her mother trotted her off to a series of four therapists, starting around the time that she was 8 years old. There was a deeper reason for all that navel-gazing, too. One after another, the therapists asked her the same basic question: “Do you think having a mom who writes erotica is affecting your sense of well-being?”

At the end of the day, it doesn’t seem to be the erotica that affected the girl’s well-being. The real culprit seems to have been growing up here as a less-than-perfect Upper East Side girl. Ms. Jong-Fast was kicked out of Dalton for poor academic performance and left several colleges. In addition to overeating and not exercising, she developed a serious drug problem and was sent to rehab – a restful experience that she rather enjoyed.

But all along the way, she was a very observant fly on the wall. The book is full of her commentary on Manhattan lifestyle – some of it pertaining to her situation as a semi-celebrity, some of it just cultural observations mixed in with the pervasive awareness of other people’s wealth and fame.

On getting her teeth capped as a teenager: “Teeth capping was kind of like the New York equivalent to the great Los Angeles tradition of the sweet sixteen boob job.”

On the matter of religion: “You don’t want to be practicing Scientology if God is only listening to people who practice Kabbalah that month,” she writes. “A way to find out what religion works is to keep on top of what InStyle magazine says. God reads InStyle magazine monthly so he can decide who is faithful and who is an infidel.”

While human relationships weren’t Ms. Jong-Fast’s specialty, her observations about her grandparents and older relatives are perhaps the most entertaining, and endearing, portions of the book. Her grandfather was Howard Fast, a prolific writer and former communist who did time for not giving up names to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Ms. Jong-Fast recognizes and appreciates her grandfather, but she also gets a lot of mileage out of his second marriage – at age 83. “Once he was married to his causes; more recently he was married to his secretary.”

Ms. Jong-Fast had some problems with the young, new wife. The newcomer was Catholic marrying into a Jewish family. She forced a rewriting of her husband’s will. And she lacked that certain New York liberal style: “She looked like a Republican … She had that thick glossy Republican skin. She had a small cluster of brown Republican freckles … Of course, she wasn’t a Republican (let’s give Grandpa a little credit here). But isn’t having the fashion sense of a Washington DC/southern Republican just as bad as being one?”

There are additional older people who figure in the book, but none so necessary as the sex doctors in the basement, without whom this book would suffer from lacking a provocative title. The sex doctors were just a couple of nomadic guests who pitched up at various people’s houses and stayed for several years. They took young Molly on walks through the park, paid grandparent-type attention to her, and lived in the Jong household as the basement tenants.

As for sex, there’s very little of it here. This book is more about food, therapy, drugs, family, and the celebrities that the author met along the way, including Joan Collins and a grade school chum, Sophie Dahl. Written as it is, in Ms. Jong-Fast’s zippy style, it all adds up to a rather lively read.