Fuelled by Ephron’s own marital woes and liberally sprinkled with both delicious recipes and one-liners, this acidly hilarious novel about a cookery writer’s romantic misadventures is a marvel of sparkling prose and biting characterisation.
Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for June 2018
This is Nora Ephron's (screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle) roman a clef: 'I always thought during the pain of the marriage that one day it would make a funny book,' she once said - and it is!
I married him against all evidence. I married him believing that marriage doesn’t work, that love dies, that passion fades, and in so doing I became the kind of romantic only a cynic is truly capable of being.
Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel discovers that her husband Mark - a man who ‘would be capable of having sex with a Venetian blind’ - is in love with another woman. The fact that this woman has a 'neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb' is no consolation.
Food sometimes is, though, since Rachel is a cookery writer, and between trying to win Mark back and wishing him dead, she offers us some of her favourite recipes.
The breakdown of the late Ephron’s own marriage proved the perfect fuel for the hilarious, whip-smart revenge that is Heartburn, her only novel. Packed with snappy, hilarious, endlessly quotable one-liners – the stock-in trade of her award-winning screenplays - Heartburn is a roller coaster of love, betrayal, loss and - most satisfyingly - revenge.
'I have bought more copies of this book to give to people, in a frenzy of enthusiasm, than any other . . . Heartburn is the perfect, bittersweet, sobbingly funny, all-too-true confessional novel' - Nigella Lawson
Other books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
ISBN: 9780349010359
Number of pages: 192
Weight: 169 g
Dimensions: 194 x 126 x 16 mm
I am not a great reader of comic novels, but Ephron's hilarious, recipe-strewn, semi-autobiographical account of a heavily pregnant woman whose husband has left her for a woman with a 'neck as long as an arm' is a treat. A perfect example of Ephron's gift for turning tragedy into comedy, Heartburn is evidence that revenge is indeed a dish best served cold
[Ephron] chatters up a storm, always on the verge of wisecracking up - Guardian
What really interested Ephron, for all her clever writing about food, politics and overcluttered purses, were matters of the heart. She is the exact opposite of Dorothy Parker. She is wit without cynicism, the ultimate romantic - Gail Collins, New York Times
I have bought more copies of this book to give to people, in a frenzy of enthusiasm, than any other . . . Heartburn is the perfect, bittersweet, sobbingly funny, all-too-true confessional novel. There is not a wrong word - about food, marriage, life, love, loss
Full of cynicism and gags, this autobiographical novel is comic writing at its finest - Andrew Billen, The Times
Heartburn took the most miserable personal situation and made it hysterically funny, inspiring and utterly relatable to women of all ages. I became obsessed with its author and thinly disguised heroine - Stylist
Heartburn is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking and as brittle (very) as it is steely (even more)
It is snortingly funny in its depiction of the death throes of a relationship. And it bursts with recipes. What more could you ask for?
Not just the funniest novel ever written about divorce, but the funniest novel ever. Only the truly talented make writing as good as this look easy - Hadley Freeman, The Week
I kept a copy of Nora Ephron's Heartburn next to me as a reminder of how to be funny and truthful, and all I ended up doing was ignoring my writing and rereading Heartburn - Amy Poehler
The real magic of the novel comes from Ephron's nonchalant conversationalism - Helen Rosner, New Yorker
Simply one of the greatest novels involving food ever written from the writer of When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. It's about love, sex, adultery and key lime pie - Jay Rayner
What a book this was , I read it in one go, I was feeling so many emotions . I felt like I was in the story with her at side her and just couldn’t put the book down. Full of wit .Humour, tainted with sadness and a... More
Ephron’s voice is as prominent in this semi-autobiographical novel as it is in the classic rom-com ‘When Harry Met Sally.’ This is without a doubt one of my favourite books to re-read; the characters feel so...
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Firstly, thank you to the publisher for the review copy. I was over joyed it was a 'VMC40' version, which means it has a thoroughly delightful cover!
Having heard great reports about it I read it...
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