Heartburn

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

Reviewed by Jess
📘📘📘

So you know all your fave 90s rom-coms like When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle? Nora Ephron wrote those! She also wrote many books, one of which I’ve finally gotten around to reading and finished very quickly.

Heartburn is a short snappy read about Rachel, a semi famous food writer in Washington DC, who discovers her husband is having an affair whilst she’s pregnant with their second child. What follows is the breakdown and attempts to rebuild the relationship, alongside juggling her career, children, family and friends. My copy has a foreword from 2004 from Nora herself, making no attempt to hide that it’s semi-autobiographical, and unequivocally stating she isn’t a food writer. People still seem to love the recipes to this day, though they didn’t really tickle my tastebuds.

I rewrote this review a million times purely because there is some very problematic language in this book that actually shocked me with regards to sterotyping non-white people in her world (it is over 40 years old now but still…!), and is one of the reasons I’m not giving it a full 5/5. The premise of the story is great, and it feels like Rachel is confessing to you as she speaks. Her musings are bittersweet, funny and right on the nose about politicians wives, therapists and absentee parents. It’s clear Ephron had a gift for rom-com genre storytelling fed by her own experiences, and if you’re a fan of the style it’s a good place to start.