Classics Corner: Heartburn by Nora Ephron; Perfect Combination of Love and Food With Plenty of Sarcasm on the Side

Classics Corner: Heartburn by Nora Ephron; Perfect Combination of Love and Food With Plenty of Sarcasm On The Side

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book with a pink cover


Spoilers: One thing that Nora Ephron knew how to do was to make her Readers and Viewers laugh at relationships.

The Academy Award nominated screenwriter of such romantic comedies as When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and Julie and Julia, Ephron was able to find the lighter situations behind the dating scene, mid-life crises, issues towards commitment, and marital strife. Many of her characters had their problems and conflicts, especially with loved ones, but they always faced them with a sharp wit that got them through their struggles. Much like their screenwriter.


By far one of her most personal works is Heartburn, a witty, dry, sometimes cynical look at the decline of a marriage. The book is based on Ephron's marriage to journalist, Carl Bernstein (of Watergate/Woodward and Bernstein/All the President's Men fame). Ephron treated her semifactual life the same way she treated her fictional: with a sarcastic wit that hid deep conflict and pain.


Rachel Samstadt is a cookbook author married to columnist, Mark Feldman. She is the mother of one child and is seven months pregnant with another. She thinks that she has a happy marriage until one day she discovers a book of kid's songs with a deeply personal, potentially romantic, message to Mark from a friend. After confronting Mark, he reveals the truth. He has been having an affair with this woman while his wife is pregnant.


This book is certainly a product of it's time when people were interested in self-reflection, when women questioned their place in work and home, and where divorce is a huge concern. Rachel still has a toe in the old world in her thoughts towards marriage. She wants to work on her marriage to Mark and is unable to accept that it's over. She spends a majority of the book writhing in agony and indecision knowing that she should let go, but unable to. When her therapist, Vera, tells her that Mark was the one who is to blame for her feelings of anger, hurt, and betrayal, Rachel disagrees. "It's my fault," she wails, "I chose him."


Besides this marriage, Rachel also recalls the early years of her and Mark's relationship, their troubled first marriages, and her parents's marriage trying to find an answer to why she turned out the way she did. Rachel's mother was a Hollywood agent who had a nervous breakdown. "We should have known my mother was crazy years before we did just because of the manical passion she brought to her lox and onions and eggs, but we didn't," Rachel said.

Her parents divorced and her mother remarried Mel, a man who literally thought he was God. Her father has an ongoing affair with Frances, who works at a paper company. "(Frances) has remained true to my father even though he keeps marrying other women and leaving her with nothing but commissions on his stationary orders," Rachel says.


She also recalls her first marriage to Charlie, who was a little too fond of hamsters and Mark's marriage to "the first Jewish Kimberly." These broken relationships contribute to Rachel's neuroses and help explain why she chooses to remain in such a toxic marriage. She doesn't want to be another unhappy marriage that ends in divorce. She wants to believe that Mark can change and that theirs will be the one happy marriage that remains.


This book is drenched with plenty of satire and sarcasm. Rachel is involved in group therapy, a trend in the '70's-'80's, where she and other members unload their neuroses and problems. During one of these sessions, a thief breaks in and robs the group members including stealing Rachel's wedding ring. When news breaks out about the robbery, Rachel's main concern is that she finally learned the other members's last names.

When she finds out about the affair, Rachel confronts Mark at his therapist only to learn that his mistress is also seeing the same therapist and is right there with him. "They were having a double session. At the family rate," Rachel fumes.


Since Rachel is a food author, Ephron inserted recipes in the text and not just as an aside in the index. Oh no, that's for amateurs. Ephron inserted the recipes into the action. Whenever, Rachel describes a particular dish, she adds the recipe on how to make it. The recipes are often in the strangest places.

In the hilarious climax, Rachel decides to make her unhappiness known with a key lime pie put, where else, in Mark's face. Right before the fatal throw, Ephron helpfully puts the recipe for key lime pie in parentheses, in case any Reader needs ammunition for their own arguments.

Besides revealing Rachel's writing style as someone who not only writes recipes but provides conversational anecdotes about how she discovered the recipes, the emphasis on cooking serves another purpose. It allows Rachel to maintain a domestic appearance.

She wants to be the perfect wife and mother who has food waiting on the table. She can control how many eggs can go into a pie and how long to stir a soup after boiling. If the recipe goes bad, she can always make something else. She realizes this as she thinks "I loved to cook, so I cooked. And then the cooking became the way of saying, I love you. And then cooking became the easy way of saying I love you. And then cooking became the only way of saying I love you."

Relationships aren't as easy as recipes. There are no simple steps to follow and no amount of mixing that will guarantee a satisfactory result. When a relationship ends, it takes a lot more than a new one to fully recover. Rachel has to learn that lesson right before she gets the pie.


Besides serving up food, Rachel serves up plenty of sarcasm. She is the type of person who is always quick with a comment or a joke trying to find something humorous in every situation. When a male friend suggests that he and Rachel should have an affair to get back at their cheating spouses, Rachel turns him down. "We would just huddle together, two little cuckolds in a storm, with nothing to hold us together but the urge to punish the two of them for breaking our hearts."

When she runs into Mark and his mistress, she isn't just irate about seeing him. She is furious because he is wearing a new blazer. She didn't realize that Mark and his new lover were in the "buying new clothes" phase. She spends the next few paragraphs meditating on the blazer rather than her marriage.


Above all, Heartburn is about self-reflection. Rachel learns that sometimes she resorts to humor and sarcasm to avoid how she really feels. She also realizes that she can't save a marriage that's doomed and that there's no shame in cutting herself off from the marriage. Learning this, allows Rachel to strengthen and adapt herself into a woman who can face life single rather than unhappily married.


Heartburn is one of Nora Ephron's best recipes for a broken heart. You take one teaspoon of infidelity. Add a dash of misery. Include two eggs worth of therapy and self-reflection. Add a dose of delicious recipes. Don't forget to mix with a hearty helping of wit and sarcasm. Preheat at 350. Let sit and savor after reading. Enjoy!