I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In this series of essays, Nora Ephron explores what it means to be a woman of a certain age. She’s funny and smart and feels likes someone you’d like to get to know.
I found myself longing for her to be my eccentric aunt or my mom’s friend so that I could go to lunch with her and listen to her pontificate on fighting wrinkles, struggling to find the right purse, fall in love with books and apartments, and maybe explain to me the bittersweet truth of life: No matter what? It ends.
As someone who is starting to feel bad about her neck all of Nora’s feelings about aging rang very true for me. Her final essay is about losing her best friend and considering her own mortality (and even that is written in a wry way that lets you know that despite her loss she’s still got a sense of humor).
In one essay she admits that when she really loved a book she’d often write the author and tell them–including lots of personal feelings that were probably inappropriate to share. At the end of this book? I wished I could have dropped her a line. Knowing that she died just a few months ago made several of the essays–particularly the one dealing with her love of books and the one about grappling with her own mortality–particularly bittersweet for me. But I’m glad I got to meet her, even if only through her work.