Why I was interested in this book

I’ve known about Nora Ephron since I was a teenager. I think I read a magazine article referencing her essay “I feel bad about my neck” (which provided some inspiration for one of my own poems), but I didn’t realize how prolific of a writer she was until much later in my own life. My best friend picked up this copy of Heartburn in a bookstore on our girls’ trip to Spain earlier this summer, and thus it also got added to my TBR.

Basic Info

• Author: Nora Ephron, American
• Genre: fiction | autobiographical, personal history
• Book concept: pregnant cookbook author and mom of a young toddler, Rachel, finds her husband cheating & watches life both fall apart and get put back together simultaneously
• This edition published in 2018 | Virago Press
  Originally published in 1983

Did I like Heartburn?

I found this story to be very entertaining if not also rather sad. I think any prosaic tale about the highs and lows of a human’s lived experience is typically full of joy and pain, often in somewhat equal measures. As the author explained in the introduction, the novel rather mirrored the events of her life during one rather difficult season. Some details were changed (though not necessarily enough to protect real-life guilty parties). If the story of bad relational choices did at times make me sad, it wasn’t one to pity.

Nora was clearly a very gifted writer and as she herself concluded the book, “…if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.”

This book may be for you if you also like: Washington D.C.; Sleepless in Seattle (film); New York City; flying between cities; tragic comedies; going to therapy; stories that mention food; vinaigrette; presumably, Ephron’s other titles; idiosyncrasies of pregnancy; key lime pie; old friends; decent bagels; When Harry Met Sally (film).

Buy the book

https://bookshop.org/a/109412/9781668036594

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SDG