Nora Ephron makes me grin uncontrollably. Next time you're driving along the road and you see a jogger with earbuds in and a big smile on her face, don't assume she's simply enjoying the slog. She's probably listening to Nora Ephron.
I don't know why I like her so much--we don't have anything in common. She's an early baby boomer and I'm post; she's a New Yorker and I'm from Smallsville; she's a self-taught gourmet and I'm just a home cook. Most of her recipes involve quantities of butter that make me cringe, although I did try her "peach pie". She calls it a pie because it's round and has a crumb crust, but to me it's a custard. The ingredients are peaches, sugar, egg yolks and sour cream. It was yummy and sweet enough to give you a toothache, but it didn't taste like peaches. And they were not tasteless, grocery store peaches, either. They were farmer's market peaches that I froze last year. They should have had flavor.
But anyway, the recipes in this book are just icing on the cake, with the cake being the breakup of her second marriage. Sounds grim--and it could be--but not the way she tells it. She makes everything into a story, because,
I'd rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me.
Laugh we certainly do...all the way through the marital infidelities, the trip to New York, the robbery, the story of the bes friend couple, the meeting with the publisher, and even the delivery of her second son. (Except I was crying a little bit at that last one.) She tells all of these stories with a certain surprise in her voice, as if she's a little out of time and place and can't believe any of this is happening to her. I loved it.
I especially appreciated Meryl Streep's audiobook narration. It would have been okay on paper, but in Meryl Streep's voice it felt special, like a late night story swap with my best friend.
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