18. Heartburn | Norah Ephron
From all the places you buy good books, mine is here.
Friends!
I’ve never been married and so by default, never been divorced. But if I do ever get to experience one, I hope it feels like Nora’s personal and hilarious account in this magical book. This is a semi-autobiographical novel, peppered with truths of Nora’s own divorce. It’s funny and sad, all at the same time.
Meryl Streep played Nora in the movie version of Heartbreak, you can watch this wonderful clip here.
If you’re thinking to yourself ‘WHO IS NORA EPHRON?’ it’s likely you may not have read her books but seen her movies (When Harry met Sally; You’ve Got Mail; Sleepless In Seattle)
From the cover:
“I always thought during the pain of the marriage that one day it would make a funny book,’ Ephron once said. And it is!
These parts! 🔥
“Everyone always asks, was he mad at you for writing the book? and I have to say, Yes, yes, he was. He still is. It is one of the most fascinating things to me about the whole episode: he cheated on me, and then got to behave as if he was the one who had been wronged because I wrote about it! I mean, it's not as if I wasn't a writer. It's not as if I hadn't often written about myself. I'd even written about him. What did he think was going to happen? That I would take a vow of silence for the first time in my life?”
“You only have a certain amount of energy, and when you spread it around, everything gets confused, and the first thing you know, you can't remember which one you've told which story to, and the next thing you know, you're moaning "Oh, Morty, Morty, Morty," when what you mean is "Oh, Sidney, Sidney, Sidney," and the next thing you know, you think you're in love with both of them simply because you've been raised to believe that the only polite response to "I love you" is "I love you too," and the next thing you know, you think you're in love with only one of them, because you're too guilty to handle loving them both.”
“You fall in love with someone, and part of what you love about him are the differences between you; and then you get married and the differences start to drive you crazy.”
“I loved to cook, so I cooked. And then the cooking became a way of saying I love you. And then the cooking became the easy way of saying I love you. And then the cooking became the only way of saying I love you.”
Here’s a beautifully curated list of the best of Nora’s books.