Wince, wince. Ouch. How can I give my hero a 3? But oh, I must. I fell in love with Nora Ephron when I read her book of essays called I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. The love affair continued when I read another collection of essays called I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections. She is a brilliant comedian, and her timing and delivery are perfect. She also wrote a great article about death and dying, which I continue to pass around to friends every chance I get. She is so damn funny, so damn right on, I adore her. When she died in 2012 from leukemia (a shocker, since she had kept her disease a secret from the public), all of us fans mourned the loss of this comic genius.So I figured I would love every single thing Nora wrote and had high expectations when I picked up Heartburn. But here’s the skinny. Or my skinny, anyway. Nora should have stuck with essays. This book, about the screwed-up relationship of two somewhat famous writers (she writes cookbooks, he’s a journalist), is witty and fun, but it’s shallow as a tide pool. I was sick of reading recipes and sick of hearing about gossipy Washington hotshots and their clichéd affairs, their bourgeois concerns. Everything seemed great at first. The first half of the book seemed hysterically funny, so I was tooling along, thinking this would be a 5 star. But then the story seemed repetitive and silly and it seemed to lose its juice. Or maybe I was just getting tired of it. And then there was the fact that she made a few politically incorrect comments about gays, Gentiles, and Hispanics. They weren’t major or belabored points(they really weren’t heinous), but they pretty much wiped the smile off my face for the time it took to read them. The only way I can accept this at all is because I realize she wrote this book long before everyone, including her, was getting their consciousness raised.My major complaint is that it reads like a journal, not a novel. In fact, the book is based on Nora’s divorce from the journalist Carl Bernstein, famous for his reporting of the Watergate scandal. The book is so autobiographical, Bernstein threatened to sue her after it was published. And surprise surprise, it’s written in first person. The storyteller, Rachel, sounds exactly like Nora in her essays, and it’s “look at me, aren’t I funny and smart and self-effacing, and in short, irresistible?” This is fine if she called the book a memoir, but she called it a novel. It doesn’t have the structural integrity of a novel. Actually it barely resembles a novel.The book rambles, takes detours. The writing is sloppy, like you’d find in journal entries. In places it’s hard to figure out if she’s talking about the present or the past. The characters aren’t developed and they don’t seem real or sympathetic.This book is so autobiographical it’s not even funny. The narrator, Rachel, says that her supposedly fictional mother uttered “take notes” on her deathbed. Ding ding! Haven’t I heard this quote somewhere before? Oh, yes, I heard it in Sister Mother Husband Dog: Etc., a 2014 memoir written by Nora’s sister, Delia Ephron. In her memoir, Delia mentioned that their mother uttered “take notes” on her deathbed. Matchy matchy! Nora took her mother’s exact words and planted them in this novel aka autobiography. Nora, an obedient daughter at least in this instance, followed her mother’s deathbed advice—she “took notes” even as her mother lay dying.Oh, and another big annoyance: the story is peppered with recipes. There’s even a list of the recipes listed at the back of the book (talk about autobiographical). I was pissed that I’d be zipping along, reading about her screwed-up marriage and I’d suddenly be interrupted by a recipe for bread pudding. If I had wanted recipes, I would have bought a cookbook.Nora also wrote the screenplay for the movie Heartburn. I saw it back in the 1980s when it came out, but of course remember nothing about it, other than Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson played the leads. I’ve heard that the movie is way better than the book (the opposite of what you’d expect), and I plan to see it again soon.Despite being pissed off that this was a sloppily written memoir passed off as a novel, I did laugh. A lot. She is one funny woman. There were many hysterical little vignettes that prove she understood perfectly the absurdity of the human condition and could communicate it with pizzazz. But sadly, this book is a 3-star deal.
In the late 1970s Nora Ephron was Gawker fodder, married to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein and pressing the flesh with all sorts of DC biggies. They had one son and another in the oven when she discovered that (insert too easy Deep Throat reference to indicate he was having an affair). So she did exactly what you would expect one of the characters in her rom-coms to do: She threw a key lime pie in the philanderer’s face. Then she turned what was probably a cesspool of suckitude into the comedic novel “Heartburn.” (Before then turning it into a super-starry movie). Rachel Samstadt is a food writer married to a bigtime DC newspaper columnist. She’s preggo with the couple’s second son when she discovers he is having an affair -- not extensive dental work, as he had claimed. She hits the bricks for New York City, where she kicks around the facts and kinda sorta waits for Mark to show up and coo the right apologies. Which, of course, he does. Nostalgia road is filled with fun-time stories about how they met, Mark’s proposal, the couple’s favorite couple and how they formed a tightly knit foursome. In its best moments, Rachel recalls gossip-y phone calls with a friend, as they speculated about just who their socialite frenemy Thelma Rice is banging on the side. “‘She had her legs waxed,’ said Betty, and then, very slowly, added, ‘for the first time.’ And then, even more slowly, ‘And it’s not even summer yet.’” (Answer, obviously: Rachel’s husband). There is also a side plot about Rachel’s involvement with group therapy and a bit of happenstance that ultimately helps her decide to ditch the dud. This story is like reading a Polaroid. There is nothing specifically dated about it, though it has a feel of perms, shoulder pads and love affairs starring quiet men who diddle secretaries or a racquetball partner’s wife or both, while the woman at home has cheeks so red they are almost blue and she’s chucking plates at a fireplace. This is post-”ignore it to keep the family together” and pre-normalization of divorce. This is forgive-over-flee and loose definitions of love. At one point Rachel tells a male friend whose wife has left him for a woman, and makes a spontaneous play for Rachel: “I’m still in love with Mark. And you’re still in love with Helen. And we would just huddle together, two little cuckolds in a storm, with nothing holding us together but the urge to punish the two of them for breaking our hearts.” Nora Ephron, man. She reminds me of a mom-character’s quirky best friend. The one with the wild scarves who strives for Most Inappropriate, then clutches your arm and cackles with her eyes wide. More hokey than hilarious, but always up to something devilish. The one who makes a joke about her chin just when she’s at her saddest. “It worries me that I’ve done what I usually do -- hidden the anger, covered the pain, pretended it wasn’t there for the sake of the story.”
What do You think about Heartburn (1996)?
Nora Ephron's new movie, 'Julie and Julia,' rode into its nationwide opening last weekend on a such a wave of publicity I'm almost too tired of all the Ephronmania to mention anything about her here. But I just read 'Heartburn' and I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I liked it so much that I lay in bed after finishing it and thought, "Three stars? Four stars? Three stars? Four stars?" I decided on three, but it's really a three-and-a-half. And it's almost a four.It's a sassy, funny read that evokes a New York kind of '70s feminism and an early Woody Allen-ish, slapstick feel. If you're a huge a fan of 'When Harry Met Sally' (as I am), you'll get a kick out of seeing how some of the jokes in the novel made their way into the film. (Ephron wrote the 'Harry' screenplay.) I haven't seen 'Julie and Julia' yet, but I know at least one crack from 'Heartburn' surfaces in that flick. How do I know that? Because of all the articles and profiles and reviews about the new movie, oh my! Still. Four stars. Almost. (P.S. Alternatively, you can read 'Heartburn' for the reason that all of New York read it when it first came out: For all the dirty, delightful details about how Ephron's marriage to Carl Bernstein fell apart after he cheated on her when she was seven months pregnant. That bastard!)
—Molly
I've always liked the movie based on this book. Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson and a soundtrack by Carly Simon... what could be better than that? The book is very similar, although I would not necessarily say the book is better. Occasionally that happens, i.e. I liked the movie Wonder Boys better than the book. Maybe simply because it is hard to relate to rich Jewish people living in New York, as I am not Jewish and definitely not rich and I've never even been to New York. The movie kind of whitewashes that stuff though, for better or for worse. Overall takeaway from the book: I found myself marveling at how CURRENT it felt. Fads really do happen first in New York, and much later for the middle of the country. Rachel, the narrator, talks about a pesto craze and I found myself thinking... back in the 70s, my parents had surely never even heard of pesto. They were eating Pizza Hut! Definitely no presto or arugula. Also, all the talk about group therapy and riding subways and everyone having sex with everyone else. On the other hand, certain aspects felt dated. For example, Rachel is pregnant throughout the book, and yet she drinks a LOT. Wine. Bellinis, hard alcohol I think. Rachel also leaves her two year old son with the maid seemingly most of the time in the book, and unapologetically. In fact, the little boy is a very peripheral element of the plot. I think that's fine, actually-- I don't think our lives HAVE to be consumed by our children(and this little boy was clearly very loved), but today, in the midst of so-called "mommy wars" and "helicopter parenting" and the only good moms being SAHMs... this would not go over very well. They would say Nora Ephron was a terrible mother. (I looked it up-- her kids seem to have turned out just fine.) The book was based on actual events in her life, when she was married to Carl Bernstein (and boy, does he sound like a creeper.) One of the funniest parts of the book-- and one I really related to-- was a scene when Rachel is flying on an airplane with her two year old son, and he throws up all over her. She says the business men near her looked at her like she was a 14th century leper. Haha... yeah...been there.By the end of the book, the flippant feel gives way to a sadder tone. I think hindsight would say that Nora Ephron just married a guy who wasn't very good at being married, and also, he's fat and ugly now (looked that up, too). Sad to think that Ephron is no longer with us. I'll probably be reading more of her books in the future.
—Auntjenny
I like this just fine for an afternoon of conking out on the couch, feeling awful, needing something undemanding yet decently written and funny. I've had a copy of Crazy Salad for years; that is much more dense, considering the pervasive Issues Of The 1970s inherent in the heavy journalistic subject matter. So, because that sort of exploration is not generally what I'm looking for while lying around feeling awful, it hadn't occurred to me to seek this one out. It was a total coincidence that it turned up on the library's honor books shelf (i.e. "books that were donated but that we really don't want to keep for some reason, so we made them free." I picked up an AWFUL book of marriage advice by James Dobson just so it would be gone from that shelf, and also sort of from a horrible morbid curiosity which I can't bring myself to actually slake. ANYWAY).Right. I could do without the chick-lit cover. Mine has the more classic 70s cover with a heart in a frying pan, and a little devil with goat legs such that he's apparently actually Pan...yeah, uh, I'll have to go get my copy of The Malleus Maleficarum to figure that one out. I like the overall trope of the main character as cookbook writer, who, in conjunction with the story of her disintegrated 70s marriage, occasionally brings up food and recipes through random association. That trope could go astoundingly badly--but it doesn't. It's done well. It works. That takes some skill, so, you know, represent. The story is fast, the tone is funny, and the construction works. The characters are not very developed, but then a significant part of the humor comes from the adept use of stereotype. "Asshole journalist dude" is reasonably powerful here, as is "social climber friend" et al. It works. I like it. I had a good time reading the entire thing in one long stretch, over which I began to feel actually better.
—Eileen
