Have you ever been unceremoniously dumped? Then read Nora Ephron’s Heartburn. This book is for the foodie with a broken heart. It’s set in Washington, D.C and is a treatise on heartbreak and food. I know Nora Ephron is responsible for some of the worst movies ever made (e.g., You’ve Got Mail!). But this book is written in the wry, acerbic voice of When Harry Met Sally and not the gloppy, saccharine voice of Sleepless in Seattle.
Based on her own experience being cheated on by Carl Bernstein — when she was seven months pregnant — Heartburn chronicles the history of Rachel Samstat’s relationship with her husband Mark and her discovery that he’s been unfaithful. The hook is that Rachel’s a food writer. The book consists of her brilliant observations of life (“Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves and I’ll show you a real asshole”), food (“Anyone who wants to write about food would do well to stay away from similies and metaphors because if you’re not careful, expressions like ‘light as a feather’ make their way into your sentences.”) and relationships. Interspersed are some very dated recipes. This is the 70’s, before the 80’s health craze, and it’s reflected in her recipes. For example, her Chez Helene Bread Pudding recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar and 2 sticks of butter. She has a recipe for sorrel soup and I’ve never seen sorrel in my life.
Recipes aside, it’s her voice, the wonderful New York voice, that is the key to the book. She constantly observes the vissicitudes of love with a healthy sense of humor and a great deal of cynicism. For example, she writes about her therapist’s analysis that Rachel “picked the one person on earth you shouldn’t be involved with,” by saying “There’s nothing brilliant about that – that’s life…Robert Browning’s shrink probably said to him, ‘So Robert, it’s very interesting, no. Of all the women in London, you pick a hopeless invalid who has a crush on her father.” And then she breaks my heart and the heart of every hard-core amateur cook with this observation, “I loved to cook so I cooked. And then the cooking became a way of saying I love you. And then the cooking became the easy way of saying I love you. And then the cooking becamse the only way of saying I love you. ..every so often I would look at my friends who were happily married and didn’t cook and I would always find myself wondering how they did it.”