Last year I read two of Nora Ephron’s memoirs (I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing) and as a huge fan of Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail I decided to start the year off with her first novel Heartburn. Reading this so closely after her memoirs and knowing the inspiration for this novel was her second marriage made this first person novel feel like another memoir. It confused my senses.
If you don’t know, the plot follows cookbook writer Rachel as she, seven months pregnant & mother of a toddler, finds her journalist husband announcing he’s in love with her friend. She runs away to New York, she’s mugged, she takes her husband back: Its self discovery sprinkled with recipes you’ll never try.
I would have loved some more detail and development; at only 179 pages the book felt a bit lean. The part with her bizzare group therapy/ the robbery is tied together in the end (it felt a bit out-of-place prior to the conclusion) and it has as happy an ending as you can expect from the subject matter.
I went in wanting to like Heartburn- and I did *while* I was reading. It was a quick read but a week removed and I only remember fragments. Enjoyable but unmemorable. I’d recommend to hardcore Ephron fans.
