I love reading Nora Ephron. She has the exact level of witty neuroticism that I aspire to in my own personal writing. I have previously reviewed Heartburn, which is, as Ephron admits, a thinly disguised novel of events that happened in her personal life.
I Feel Bad About My Neck – And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, is a collection of essays written by Ephron across her career as a journalist and magazine writer. The essays were all feature articles in publications and news outlets including Vogue, The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar and The New York Times.
Across this collection, Nora tackles love, marriage, ageing, real-estate, parenting, death and more. Her essays Serial Monogamy: A Memoir and On Rapture respectively cover her love [read borderline obsession] with cooking and reading. Some subjects may appear trivial (I Hate My Purse) but are tremendously entertaining and unifying – we all know someone with a handbag like Nora’s.
I think the essence of what makes Nora’s work so readable is:
1. She’s a bit of a nut.
2. She says it how it is.
3. She can make the every day entertaining.
She recalls her mother telling her ‘Everything is copy,’ and she made a career out of it. This is a brilliant collection for women of all ages to laugh at and appreciate. I am so sad she is no longer here.
When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you; but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh. So you become the hero rather than the victim of the joke.
Nora Ephron (from The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words or Less)