“RADIO 4-LETTER” was the Sun’s headline earlier this week as it raged at BBC Radio 4 and its feminist series Riot Girls, for the week-long broadcast of a reading of Erica Jong’s 1973 novel Fear of Flying. After objectifying women on page 3 for, say, 45 years, the Sun decided that Radio 4 had somehow lowered the tone. Listeners were apparently “furious”, the paper declared, noting that “Ofcom confirmed they had received one complaint.” Huh.

As a millennial who spent most her teenage years reading fantasy novels and pulp crime, I never picked up the feminist classic Fear of Flying as a teen. Unlike a few of my colleagues, who start speaking about the novel and find themselves glazing over with memories of nervous readings hidden away from parents during school breaks in the 70s. But in the wake of Fifty Shades and all its virgin fisting and tampon yanking (yep), is there anything in Jong’s novel to blush over?

Good news! Fear of Flying still gloriously holds its own. Our narrator Isadora’s voracious appetite is much more delicious and victorious than Christian Grey’s emotionally barren thrusting. Isadora is trying to determine her place in the world: she’s struggling to place herself professionally, she finds her husband unfulfilling, and sets out to find sexual freedom, both in the present and in memories of romps she lives out in her head.

There’s plenty of sex, but it couldn’t be less sexy. Jong’s language reveals a predatory approach to sex that is almost tiresome. Isadora’s angry post-argument masturbation results in an orgasm that “sucks violently”. She talks about finding sexual partners in hunting terms. She’s fearsome: during one half-hearted romp she asks, “What could be more poignant than a liberated woman eye to eye with a limp prick?” Sexual encounters are handled with such cold practicality that it veers into unnerving.

There may not be a single character in the book who is likable, but Isadora is complex and undeniably interesting. She has the same terrible charm of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, and a ruthless approach to sex that you could imagine in a Philip Roth novel (with less furniture abuse). She’s constantly wrapped up in her blend of neuroses, fretting about a hijack while flying, worrying about rape while sitting in a cafe. Everyone is always fighting or screwing or thinking about doing a bit of both. If anyone could relax enough to get their rocks off on this, I’d be more worried about how stressed the rest of their life was.

So, really, all that is left is a very honest, ugly book about sex and gender dynamics. And it’s great. Halfway through chapter one I knew I was going to enjoy the rest when Isadora used cheese as a brutal sex analogy: “Even if you loved your husband, there came that inevitable year when fucking him turned as bland as Velveeta cheese: filling, fattening even, but no thrill to the taste buds, no bittersweet edge, no danger. And you longed for an overripe Camembert, a rare goat cheese: luscious, creamy, cloven-hoofed.” That is the whole book: deliciously horrible.

Was it too racy a choice for mid-morning radio? Most of the responses I have seen to Radio 4’s broadcast this week have sit in two camps; delighted tweets at the sheer naughtiness of hearing the term “finger-fuck” before their morning tea, and comments containing different combinations of the words “ban”, “this”, “sick” and “filth”. It’s hilarious to imagine children furtively gathering around radios across the country, but based on the responses I’ve read, the only people who have a problem with the broadcast are adults who think banning something means it doesn’t exist.

Most of the responses I’ve seen this week has been positive, if very British. The gentle tittering at any mention of tits revealed a maturity among the quieter majority. The banal, jovial tales I read demonstrated a degree of grown-up indifference. One tweeter said they had to abandon their washing up in order to concentrate properly, another had to brew a soothing cuppa. “I almost choked on my jammy dodger,” tweeted another (the key part of that dangerous anecdote being “almost”).

So is Fear of Flying worth reading? Yes, I think so. Jong has a knack for unflinching truths, about humans generally but gender dynamics too. Forty-three years on, people all around the world are still talking about victim blaming, sexist stereotypes and the paradox of women being desired sexually while denigrated for reciprocating. And for anyone who has only heard the Radio 4 broadcast – get the book, they cut a few C-bombs. Bless ’em.