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Summary
Summary
With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life itself.
The woman who brought us When Harry Met Sally . . . discusses everything-from how much she hates her purse to how much time she spends attempting to stop the clock: the hair dye, the treadmill, the lotions and creams that promise to slow the aging process but never do. Oh, and she can't stand the way her neck looks. But her dermatologist tells her there's no quick fix for that.
Ephron chronicles her life, but mostly she speaks frankly and uproariously about life as a woman of a certain age.
Utterly courageous, wickedly funny, and unexpectedly moving in its truth telling, I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK is an audiobook of wisdom, advice, and laugh-out-loud moments, a scrumptious, irresistible treat.
Author Notes
Nora Ephron was born in Manhattan on May 19, 1941. While attending Wellesley College, she was a summer intern in the Kennedy White House in 1961. After graduating in 1962, she began her career as a journalist with the New York Post, where she remained until 1968. She then focused on magazine journalism and primarily wrote for Esquire and New York. She wrote several books during her lifetime including Heartburn, Wallflower at the Orgy, Crazy Salad: Some Things about Women, Scribble Scribble, I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Reflections on Being a Woman, and I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections. In her later years, she was a blogger for The Huffington Post.
She wrote several screenplays including Silkwood (1983), Heartburn (1986), and When Harry Met Sally (1989). She also wrote and directed several movies including This Is My Life (1992), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), You've Got Mail (1998), Lucky Numbers (2000), Bewitched (2005), and Julie and Julia (2009). She wrote two plays Love, Loss, and What I Wore with her sister and Imaginary Friends. Her title I Remember Nothing made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012. She died from pneumonia brought on by acute myeloid leukemia on June 26, 2012 at the age of 71.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The honest truth is that it's sad to be over sixty," concludes Nora Ephron in her sparkling new book about aging. With 15 essays in 160 pages, this collection is short, a thoughtful concession to pre- and post-menopausal women (who else is there?), like herself, who "can't read a word on the pill bottle," follow a thought to a conclusion, or remember the thought after not being able to read the pill bottle. Ephron drives the truth home like a nail in your soon-to-be-bought coffin: "Plus, you can't wear a bikini." But just as despair sets in, she admits to using "quite a lot of bath oil... I'm as smooth as silk." Yes, she is. This is aging lite-but that might be the answer. Besides, there's always Philip Roth for aging heavy. Ephron, in fact, offers a brief anecdote about Roth, in a chapter on cooking, concerning her friend Jane, who had a one-night stand, long ago, with the then "up-and-coming" writer. He gave Jane a copy of his latest book. "Take one on your way out," he said. Conveniently, there was a box of them by the front door. Ephron refuses to analyze-one of her most refreshing qualities-and quickly moves on to Jane's c?leri remoulade. Aging, according to Ephron, is one big descent-and who would argue? (Well, okay-but they'd lose the argument if they all got naked.) There it is, the steady spiraling down of everything: body and mind, breasts and balls, dragging one's self-respect behind them. Ephron's witty riffs on these distractions are a delightful antidote to the prevailing belief that everything can be held up with surgical scaffolding and the drugs of denial. Nothing, in the end, prevents the descent. While signs of mortality proliferate, Ephron offers a rebuttal of consequence: an intelligent, alert, entertaining perspective that does not take itself too seriously. (If you can't laugh, after all, you are already, technically speaking, dead.) She does, however, concede that hair maintenance-styling, dyeing, highlighting, blow-drying-is a serious matter, not to mention the expense. "Once I picked up a copy of Vogue while having my hair done, and it cost me twenty thousand dollars. But you should see my teeth." Digging deeper, she discovers that your filthy, bulging purse containing numerous things you don't need-and couldn't find if you did-is, "in some absolutely horrible way, you." Ephron doesn't shy away from the truth about sex either, and confesses, though with an appropriate amount of shame, that despite having been a White House intern in 1961, she did not have an affair with JFK. May Ephron, and her purse, endure so she can continue to tell us how it goes. Or, at least, where it went. Toni Bentley is the author, most recently, of Sisters of Salome and The Surrender, an Erotic Memoir. She is writing about Emma, Lady Hamilton, for the Eminent Lives series. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Ephron's series of delectable short essays, most previously published (in the New Yorker, Vogue, and O, among other periodicals), will be especially delicious to women pretty much like her: over 60, though fighting to maintain a 50s sensibility, accomplished, a parent, rich enough to have regular manicures, and preferably a New Yorker. That said, there's plenty of universality in her wry humor. What woman hasn't looked in a mirror, pulled back her facial skin, and realized the problem was really her neck? Or been horrified to find that upscale purses cost what was used to be a reasonable price for a used car? Baby Boomer parents will certainly nod when she writes about the ungrateful adolescent who-unlike you-has parents really into parenting: ""You've devoted years to making your children feel that you care about every single emotion they've ever felt."" Some of the pieces are pop classics, like the one about her love affair with her Upper West Side apartment. And, beyond the wit, much of her advice is good: use lots of your favorite bath oil, she says, because recent events in her life-the illness and deaths of friends-have taught her that she's ""going to feel like an idiot if I die tomorrow and I skimped on the bath oil."""--"Cooper, Ilene" Copyright 2007 Booklist
Guardian Review
Nora Ephron has mastered the art of seeming likeable - a rarer facility than one might think. In tone and touch, her essay collection I Feel Bad About My Neck makes a useful bible for those of us who foster the less useful knack for seeming irritating. The secret appears to be to include a generous measure of beguiling self-deprecation, the humility slyly at odds with prose that is searingly smart. To be revealing only to the degree that you are funny, never to the degree that you plead for sympathy. After all, so grateful is the average reader to laugh or even cock a smile that few will troll these droll selections without being charmed to bits. The title essay is typically dry and undemandingly confiding. Ephron is ashamed of her neck. True enough, despite state-of-the- art concealers, collagen injections and Botox, the feature that most reliably betrays a woman's age these days is her neck: "You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn't have to if it had a neck." While these giveaway striations, wattles and folds do admit to surgical solutions, Ephron is loath to confront in the mirror "a stranger who looks suspiciously like a drum pad". "I Hate My Purse" is endearing, starting with the title. Within a woman's handbag, you can read the tea-leaves of a woman's character - doubtless literal tea leaves, from that packet of Earl Grey you swiped from a Chicago hotel room in 1983, along with "a morass of loose Tic Tacs, solitary Advils, lipsticks without tops, Chap Sticks of unknown vintage, little bits of tobacco even though there has been no smoking going on for at least 10 years, . . . English coins from a trip to London last October . . . and an unprotected toothbrush that looks as if it has been used to polish silver". That painfully familiar snapshot helps to explain why I have eschewed handbags for years, although substitute receptacles - bike panniers, backpacks, a large-pocketed leather jacket - collect the same humiliating detritus, amid which the everywoman can never locate what she's looking for. "A flashlight would help, but if you were to put one into your purse, you'd never find it." Ephron is gifted at just this kind of observation, which triggers instant recognition yet does not sound like something you've read before. "The Lost Strudel or Le Strudel Perdu" confesses to an addiction to a particular cabbage strudel from a Hungarian pastry shop on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The strudel followed what is in my experience an iron-clad rule of commerce: if you ever really fancy any product, it will be discontinued. Ephron's fixation on finding a replacement strudel (including a failed attempt to reproduce the pastry in her own kitchen) recalled my own equally barmy attempts to track down the edible equivalent of Argentina's disappeared: Dunn's River Jerk seasoning, or - for a terrifying period before the dense, pleasingly under-sweet confections were mercifully reinstated - Marks & Spencer Welsh Cakes. Yet my favourite essay from this collection will surely resonate with the property-obsessed in Britain. "Moving On" describes a love affair, but with a building. Years ago, Ephron lucked into a vast, regally high-ceilinged eight-room flat in a formidable old apartment block on the Upper West Side. The Apthorp was replete with an inner courtyard and companionable, collusively smug long-term tenants. She came into this good fortune by parting with a small one in "key money" - a bribe to the previous tenant of $24,000. Amortised over 24 years - and who would not remain in such a glorious dwelling for ever? - this private stamp duty, Ephron calculated, amounted to the equivalent of one cappuccino per day. "I should point out," she writes, "that I don't normally use the word 'amortise' unless I'm trying to prove that something I can't really afford is not just a bargain but practically free. This usually involves dividing the cost of the item I can't afford by the number of years I'm planning to use it, and if that doesn't work, by the number of days or hours or minutes, until I get to a number that is less that the cost of a cup of cappuccino." Alas, like so many romances, this one soured. Ephron's beloved was initially protected by New York City's arcane rent-control laws, which were revised during her tenancy to gradually raise the ludicrously small rent of such luxury housing stock to better reflect its real market value. Justice, of course, but justice never seems just to the beneficiary of injustice. Over the course of three years, the author's rent rose 400%. "Just like that, I fell out of love. Twelve thousand dollars a month is a lot of cappuccino." Sweetly packaged in an undersized format, this admittedly slight collection - much of which has been published previously in magazines - imparts a few nuggets of wisdom that you can take to the bank: "Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from," and, even more importantly, "Don't buy anything 100% wool even if it seems to be very soft and not particularly itchy when you try it on in the store." Recall how hard it was last year to find a present for Mother's Day that wasn't yet one more box of chocolate? Remember this book. You'll thank me. It's perfect. Lionel Shriver's new novel, The Post-Birthday World , is published by HarperCollins in May. To order I Feel Bad About My Neck for pounds 11.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop Caption: article-ephron.1 [Nora Ephron] is gifted at just this kind of observation, which triggers instant recognition yet does not sound like something you've read before. "The Lost Strudel or Le Strudel Perdu" confesses to an addiction to a particular cabbage strudel from a Hungarian pastry shop on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The strudel followed what is in my experience an iron-clad rule of commerce: if you ever really fancy any product, it will be discontinued. Ephron's fixation on finding a replacement strudel (including a failed attempt to reproduce the pastry in her own kitchen) recalled my own equally barmy attempts to track down the edible equivalent of Argentina's disappeared: Dunn's River Jerk seasoning, or - for a terrifying period before the dense, pleasingly under-sweet confections were mercifully reinstated - Marks & Spencer Welsh Cakes. - Lionel Shriver.
Kirkus Review
A disparate assortment of sharp and funny pieces revealing the private anguishes, quirks and passions of a woman on the brink of senior citizenhood. Ephron, whose screenwriting credits include Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally and Silkwood, has brought together 15 essays, most of them previously published in the New York Times, the New Yorker or assorted women's/fashion magazines. She explores the woes of aging with honesty--hair-coloring and Botox are standard treatments, as is getting a mustache wax--but maintaining a 60-plus body is only her starting point. Ephron includes breezy accounts of her culinary misadventures, her search for the perfect cabbage strudel and her dissatisfaction with women's purses. An essay on her love affair and eventual disenchantment with the Apthorp apartment building on Manhattan's West Side deftly captures both the changes in New York City and in her own life. There's an unusual pairing of presidential pieces: A lighthearted piece on her non-encounter with Kennedy when she was a White House intern in the 1960s is followed by a fiercely astringent one on the failings of Bill Clinton. Some of the pieces, such as her essay on parenting, seem tentative, and two, "The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words or Less" and "What I Wish I'd Known," read like works in progress, suggesting that they may have been rushed into print to fill the pages of a too-small book. One doesn't need to be a post-menopausal New Yorker with a liberal outlook and comfortable income to enjoy Ephron's take on life, but those who fit the profile will surely relish it most. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Not going gently into that good night: funny essays on women resisting aging, baby-boomer style. With a nine-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
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. Excerpted from I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
