In her 2010 essay demanding an end to the tasteless horrors of the egg-white omelette, Nora Ephron takes a second to address her more high-minded readers. “I don’t want to confuse this with something actually important, like the war in Afghanistan, which it’s also important to put a halt to,” she says, a smart slap to those who would characterise her as frothy or trivial. This collection, initiated before her death in 2012, covers all aspects of her brilliant career: a chapter of Heartburn, her fictionalised account of the collapse of her marriage to Carl Bernstein; scenes from When Harry Met Sally, her redefinition of the romcom; journalism and profiles, and her thoughts on beauty, ageing and food (including a mustardy, vegan-tempting paean to one deli’s pastrami sandwich). Her harsh 1974 review of Jan Morris’s book Conundrum doesn’t travel so easily into the present, but jarring notes are rare. “Vaginal politics”, the empty nest, the role of Cosmopolitan: whatever the subject, Ephron’s friendly, sensible voice rings out, alert to good intentions and bad outcomes, kindnesses and cruelties, and, most movingly, all the serious emotional rocks that lurk in the shallows.
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