Nora Ephron (1941–2012)

Easy to read, which might make you think it's superficial, but it's not. It's a captivating story of a marriage that started out great and ends with an ouch; but in general, it's about love.
Just get a load of this wonderful passage: That's the catch about betrayal, of course: that it feels good, that there's something immensely pleasurable about moving from a complicated relationship which involves minor atrocities on both sides too a nice, neat, simple one where one person has done show more something so horrible and unforgivable that the other person is immediately absolved of all the low-grade sins of sloth, envy, gluttony, avarice and I forget the other three.
And this: Sometimes I believe that love dies but hope springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that hope dies but love springs eternal. ... Sometimes I believe that love is essential, and sometimes I believe that the only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it.
Plus, I want to try her recipe for lima beans and pears — how improbable a combination is that? (Just like couples, sometimes, I guess.) show less

I've got very bogged down in the Bill Bryson book, so needed a comfort read to stop me hitting a reading slump. I've never read anything by Nora Ephron before, but I'd a great book haul just before my birthday and this one spoke to me in the Oxfam charity book shop.

I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman is a collection of wry observational essays about getting older from a women's perspective. Some of it touches on big topics, like the essay on confronting death when a show more close friend dies, but much of it is comical perspective on the every day things in life. Positioning the stories as anecdotal from her own life experiences, the essays are full of New York dry humour and wit, such as the title story on how the neck always gives the game away in the battle against ageing.

You either like Ephron's sort of humour or you don't but it worked for me. These essays aren't meant to be taken too seriously, and I think anyone who reviews this book as being ego-centric is missing the point. Ephron knows that the best humour is to be found in every day life observations and self-deprecation. In one story she writes about how her love affair with the Upper East Side building she rents her apartment in ends after 10 years when her rent is hiked due to a new law allowing huge rent increases for people earning over $250,000. The point of the story is not to inform the masses that she's earning over $250,000, but to poke fun at her own indignation of this first world problem for someone who's very comfortably well off.

4 stars - This isn't a book I'm going to spend too much thinking about afterwards, but it was a short, amusing filler to whet my reading appetite again. show less

Nora Ephron's voice is mesmerizing. Emerging from a session with "Heartburn," I felt wittier and slightly more acerbic about marriage. I now hear my husband's continuous requests for the time (I bought him a watch, for goodness sake!) as akin to Ephron's hilarious sketch "Where's the butter?" The author introduces readers to her rich ethnic culture and wifely status through the use of recipes dotted throughout "Heartburn" like cutting cold butter into pie dough. Truly a brilliant and show more entertaining take on the forlorn subject of a deteriorating marriage. show less

This book of vignettes on being 60 would have lost much of its audacity had I not heard it read by the author on my iPod. The nasal New York tones flowing with New York stories added a dimension of wit, satire, and frustration. It was like listening to an obnoxious, gossipy, self-centered lady -- impossible to ignore, highly entertaining and covering topics from manicures, apartments, hair care, marriages, divorces, the bikini triangle, Bill Clinton, and JFK--a tour de force/farce--magnificent.