And even though I watched it through a personal lens of knowing how things turn out, that is still a depressing arc to watch. The movie takes a conventional, chronological approach, so that we watch this couple fall in love, get married, and fall apart. The book begins with Rachel discovering the affair, and earlier history is told in flashback through that lens. It was just a very, very depressing love story. It was fascinating, actually, how a different telling of the same events (because it was pretty faithful to the book in plot) can bring it from ironically comedic to just plain depressing. And the movie, I am sorry to say, was just tragic. Meryl Streep played Rachel in the movie version-which explains the audiobook reading-with Jack Nicholson as her philandering husband. Meryl Streep as a reader was, of course, marvelous. There was some of the same style, and I think both women would probably describe themselves cheerfully as a little neurotic with complicated families. Something about the book, and Rachel in particular, reminded me of Carrie Fisher’s memoirs. And along with a comedic edge given to the tragedy, some incidents are just genuinely funny. But it becomes a story about the absurd tragic comedy of life, which is quite different from a story about the tragedy of life. But there’s a dry wit and self-deprecating charm to Rachel’s voice that made tragic events surprisingly funny-while still being tragic. In a circuitous narrative, Rachel tells us about what led them to here and about the aftermath, punctuated by occasional recipes-because she’s a food writer who tells family stories. Rachel learns that her husband is having an affair while she’s seven months pregnant. Instead of being about a couple falling in love, it’s about a couple falling apart. I’ve been reading more love stories this year, and Heartburn the book is something of an anti-love story. The movie, when I gave that a try, was, on the other hand, much less satisfying.

And when I listened to it, it was surprisingly funny and Streep was as good as I expected. I put down the book to search my library’s catalog and-yes, they had it! Requested on the spot. In one of the more circuitous ways I’ve found a book, I recently read a nonfiction book by Julia Cameron, where she talks about Nora Ephron’s career, and mentions an audiobook of Heartburn, read by Meryl Streep.

Nora ephron book heartburn