Review
“Wickedly witty. . . . Crackling sharp. . . . Fireworks shoot out [of this collection].” —The Boston Globe“Long-overdue. . . . Executed with sharpness and panache . . . . [Nora Ephron] retains an uncanny ability to sound like your best friend, whoever you are. . . . It's good to know that Ms. Ephron's wry, knowing X-ray vision is one of them.” —The New York Times“Women who find themselves somewhere between the arrival of their first wrinkle and death have to hear only the title to get the message.”—Los Angeles Times“Wry and amusing. . . . Marvelous.” —The Washington Post Book World
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Back Cover
Never marry a man you wouldn t want to be divorced from. If the shoe doesn t fit in the shoe store, it s never going to fit. When your children are teenagers, it s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you. Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five you will be nostalgic for by the age of forty-five. Recall how hard it was last year to find a present for Mother s Day that wasn t yet one more box of chocolates? Remember this book. You ll thank me. It s perfect Lionel Shriver, Guardian Nobody does it funnier Maureen Lipman A bit like having your own clever film narrator s voice accompanying you through the sticky bits of life: the grief of a sagging neck, the joy of a good handbag, the unremitting loss of a best friend and the effort of facing up to no longer being 50 Good Housekeeping
About the Author
Nora Ephron is also the author of Wallflower at the Orgy. She received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally..., Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle, which she also directed. Her other credits include the film Michael and the play Imaginary Friends. She lives in New York City with her husband, writer Nicholas Pileggi.
From the Hardcover edition.
From The Washington Post
Nora Ephron is funny. She has the credentials to prove it: 12 screenplays, including three nominated for Academy Awards; Heartburn, the story (with recipes) of the disintegration of her second marriage; and five collections of essays.I Feel Bad About My Neck, her newest collection, is subtitled "And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman," though it might more accurately be called "A Measure of One Woman's Life." A certain melancholy pervades the humor here. The book opens with the title essay about aging and concludes with a rumination about death called "Considering the Alternative." Between are essays about books treasured along the way, thoughts "On Maintenance" (bodily upkeep), the stages of parenting, a timeline of beloved cookbooks, cabbage strudel, her love affair with an apartment and "The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words or Less."
There's more, but basically this is a kind of retrospective -- wry and amusing, as you'd expect, but also a bit strained and sad. It's a condensation of a life graced with privilege, which can make empathizing with Ephron a bit difficult. We all end up too aware of our own deterioration, but we don't all have our hair done twice a week or have our unwanted facial fuzz "threaded" by a woman who uses "a fantastic and thrilling method of hair removal she had learned in Russia." Then there are the three hours every six weeks spent having "four tiny, virtually invisible blondish streaks" added to her hair (which has already had the gray covered over), the weekly manicures and regular pedicures, and vast amounts of skin cream and bath oil. It's all brave (and funny) to talk about -- but odd, because if you've spent all that time and money trying to look younger and better, doesn't it make more sense not to tell anybody you've done it so they can think you just naturally look young and good? And then there's the time and the money. As far as money is concerned, she's earned it, no question about that -- but the specifics of what she's writing about, here and in other essays in the collection, are much less than universal. There are worlds where having your facial hair regularly threaded is as affordable as the judicious use of a pair of tweezers, but that choice is a luxury many women don't have.
Most women will love the essay about her purse. She may "feel bad" about her neck, but she "hates" her purse. She's writing here for women "who understand that their purses are reflections of negligent housekeeping, hopeless disorganization, a chronic inability to throw anything away" and who aren't wildly successful at changing -- at the right time -- from a winter purse to a summer one. Her list of permanent purse contents includes loose Tic-Tacs, lipsticks with no covers, leaky ballpoint pens and crumpled tissues that might have been used but equally well might not have been -- who can tell?
There's a lot of interesting advice in a chapter called "What I Wish I'd Known." She tells us that "the last four years of psychoanalysis are a waste of money," but she doesn't say how you know when the last four years begin. I like "If the shoe doesn't fit in the shoe store, it's never going to fit": So many things could be substituted for shoes in exactly the same sense. She tells us that "The plane is not going to crash," but later she notes "Overinsure everything." The essay's last words: "There are no secrets."
"The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words or Less" is a marvelous compilation of high and low points and moments of great clarity and learning. Under "What my mother said," there is "Everything is copy." This is a lesson the daughter learned well, as her ex-husbands would agree.
Despite the elegiac tone of this collection, it would be nice to think that we'll have Nora Ephron around for a long time. She's always good for an amusing line, a wry smile, and sometimes an abashed grin of recognition as she homes in on one of our own dubious obsessions.
"Goodbye" may be her final word in this uneven book, but with any luck, it'll turn out that she doesn't mean it.
Reviewed by Bunny Crumpacker
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
What I Wish I’d Known
People have only one way to be.
Buy, don’t rent.
Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced
from.
Don’t cover a couch with anything that isn’t more or
less beige.
Don’t buy anything that is 100 percent wool even if it
seems to be very soft and not particularly itchy when
you try it on in the store.
You can’t be friends with people who call after 11 p.m.
Block everyone on your instant mail.
The world’s greatest babysitter burns out after two and
a half years.
You never know.
The last four years of psychoanalysis are a waste of
money.
The plane is not going to crash.
Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age
of thirty-five you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-
five.
At the age of fifty-five you will get a saggy roll just
above your waist even if you are painfully thin.
This saggy roll just above your waist will be especially
visible from the back and will force you to reevaluate
half the clothes in your closet, especially the white
shirts.
Write everything down.
Keep a journal.
Take more pictures.
The empty nest is underrated.
You can order more than one dessert.
You can’t own too many black turtleneck sweaters.
If the shoe doesn’t fit in the shoe store, it’s never going
to fit.
When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have
a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.
Back up your files.
Overinsure everything.
Whenever someone says the words “Our friendship is
more important than this,” watch out, because it almost
never is.
There’s no point in making piecrust from scratch.
The reason you’re waking up in the middle of the night
is the second glass of wine.
The minute you decide to get divorced, go see a lawyer
and file the papers.
Overtip.
Never let them know.
If only one third of your clothes are mistakes, you’re
ahead of the game.
If friends ask you to be their child’s guardian in case
they die in a plane crash, you can say no.
There are no secrets.
From the Hardcover edition.
Fifteen essays written by the wonderful Nora Ephron about what it's like to be a woman over 60 are funny, sweet, sad, distressing, and dead honest. Ephron reads the way she writes--with a wry, witty candor that is engaging. It's a little like talking to a friend who won't let you lie to yourself about your aging body and the forces of gravity. In time, everything sags. With spirit and intelligence, Ephron's conversational tone keeps heads nodding and grins widening as she recalls her attempts at solutions to pre- and post-menopausal problems. She deals with hair dyes, skin creams, manicures, and pedicures, but by the book's conclusion she finally declares what most women of a certain age know anyway: Trying to stop the clock simply doesn't work. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
What failure of imagination had caused me to forget that life was full of other possibilities, including the possibility that eventually I would fall in love again?Highlighted by 390 Kindle readers
