I listened to this destined-to-be-classic. Nora Ephron brought us "When Harry met Sally", "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've got Mail" - all of which revived the romantic comedy film industry. She also wrote "Julie and Julia", in which Meryl Streep depicted Julia Childs.
No small reputation - when you've invented lines like "I'll have what she's having" from Harry and Sally or "You make a million decisions that mean nothing, and then one day, you order take-out, and it changes your life" from Sleepless, then expectations are high. Very.
And then it's narrated by Meryl Streep. Herself.
Oh, did I mention the expectations?
And Heartburn was, well, ok. Based on the author's own story of love and breakup, it was mildly amusing, fairly heartwarming and a jolly good read. But nothing like those movies, or even the lines from them. I also discovered that of Nora's other stories, only When Harry Met Sally is a book (the rest are unpublished screenplays).
Heartburn starts when Rachel is seven months pregnant and her husband leaves her for another woman, who has a "neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb". Rachel has a therapy group (of course) and writes cookbooks for a living, but mostly what she wants is revenge.
“I married him against all evidence. I married him believing that marriage doesn't work, that love dies, that passion fades, and in so doing I became the kind of romantic only a cynic is truly capable of being.”
Read it for an entertaining diversion, with some recipes thrown in.
Enjoyable, not all that remarkable, here are some more snippets.
3 stars
ISBN: 9780679767954
You may also enjoy Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson , Blue Shoe by Ann Lamott or Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff.
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