Review: I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

Reading Nora Ephron‘s writing feels like talking to a sassy close friend. Her writing has always been disarmingly funny, while having a lot of heart – the perfect balance of being humorous and poignant. She has come a bit late in my life, with her movies being my introduction to her works. Last year, I read Heartburn (her only novel) and loved it so much! And so I had a lot of expectations with this book – and it did not disappoint. It’s been a long time since I posted a stand-alone review of a non fiction book but I think this book deserves all the flowers. 💐

Title: I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
Author: Nora Ephron
First Publication Date: January 1, 2006
Genre: Non Fiction, Memoir, Essays
Rating: ☕☕☕☕☕︎ (4.5/5)

Blurb

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”…, “Sleepless in Seattle”, “You’ve Got Mail”, and “Bewitched,” and the author of best sellers “Heartburn,” “Scribble Scribble,” and “Crazy Salad,” 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 as an obsessed cook, passionate city dweller, and hapless parent. She recounts her anything-but-glamorous days as a White House intern during the JFK years (“I am probably the only young woman who ever worked in the Kennedy White House that the President did not make a pass at”) and shares how she fell in and out of love with Bill Clinton – from a distance, of course. 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 a book of wisdom, advice, and laugh-out-loud moments, a scrumptious, irresistible treat. (via Goodreads)

Thoughts

My edition of I Feel Bad About My Neck started out with an introduction by Dolly Alderton (my beloved). It was the perfect start, with Dolly saying that Nora has been her only adult imaginary friend having had constant conversations with her in her head (‘What would Nora do?‘). And honestly, relatable! I don’t know which rock I’ve been living under for the past years but if I also had Nora’s words to guide me while growing up, it would’ve been a (more) fun time. Luckily, there’s this book (one of the things that made it possible for her to be eternally there): a collection of essays over the years, that doubles as a meditation about life, being a woman, ageing, and even death.

From the amusing contemplation on ageing in “I Feel Bad About My Neck“, to the very random “I Hate My Purse” – to describing in vivid detail what it feels like to get lost in a book in “On Rapture“; I got absorbed with the hilarious, matter-of-factly way she looks at the world – and writes about it. She has a distinct tone that I can’t get enough of. I can actually hear Nora say all of these things in my head even if I actually have not heard her speak. From maintenance (of yourself) to parenting, Nora has something to say – and listen I did.

One of my favourite pieces is “Moving On” – in which Nora laments on finding the perfect apartment, falling in love with it and the neighbourhood it’s in, and trying to stay in it as long as she can. I loved it so much. I love love love it. Being melodramatic is my jam and I am glad to found a sister in romanticizing and overacting (“and I began, in my manner, to make a religion out of my neighbourhood“). Her love affair with New York made me want to visit it again and experience (and internalize properly) the magic of its city. I felt sad at the end ( “But it’s not love. It’s just where I live.“) – a realization that some good things comes to an end and that is just how life is. It also gave me one of the my favourite quotes that I’ve read lately:

“What failure of imagination had caused me to forget that life was full of other possibilities, including the possibility that eventually I would fall in love again?”

She made me want to buy cook books and spend my free time recreating recipes from them. She made me want to get a blow out from a hair salon once in a while (because ‘It’s cheaper by far than psychoanalysis, and much more uplifting.’). But most of all, she made me want to write (“Write everything down. Keep a journal. Take more pictures.“).

She ended the book with “Considering the Alternative” – musings on death and what it means, the sadness of being left behind by most of her friends, and also the underlying gratitude to be alive (“I am way past Age Shame, if I ever had it. I am just happy to be here at all.“). This essay made me re-evaluate the things that I do to actually live out the rest of my life while I still have it – to stop being insecure about things that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things (“If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don’t take it off until you’re thirty four.“), to stop myself from not enjoying life enough by looking into the future worries (“But if the events of the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that I’m going to feel like an idiot if I die tomorrow and I skimped on bath oil today. So I use quite a lot of bath oil. more than you could ever imagine.“).

I feel like this is a book that you could read at various stages in your life and, at each time, it will mean different to you. For once, I got jealous of Dolly for having real-life friends that she could actually gift this book to and that I know would actually appreciate it. But in the mean time, I’m glad I came across this for myself – as I feel like this is something that I will treasure and will go back to again and again for a long time. Honestly, I need to read (AND watch) more of Nora Ephron’s works. Definitely recommended! 💅

Rating

Quotable Quotes

“But never mind the money. This, after all, is not a story about money. It’s a story about love. And all stories about love begin with a certain amount of rationalization.”

“If I only have one life to live, self-pityingly, why am I living it here?“

“Things change in New York; things change all the time. You don’t mind this when you live here; when you live here, it’s part of the caffeinated romance of this city that never sleeps. But when you move away, you experience change as a betrayal.”

“Everything is copy.”

“When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you; but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh. So you become the hero rather than the victim of the joke.”

“‘Nora. We can’t do everything.‘ I have been given the secret of life.”

“the state of rapture I experience when I read a wonderful book is one of the main reasons I read, but it doesn’t happen every time or even every other time, and when it does happen, I’m truly beside myself.”

“There’s something call the rupture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time on the bottom of the ocean and can’t tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he’s liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can’t adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All this happens to me when I surface from a great book.

Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know, it’s everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again you could be.”

About the Author

Nora Ephron was the author of the hugely successful I Feel Bad About My Neck, I Remember Nothing, and Heartburn among many others. She received Academy Award nominations for best original screenplay for When Harry Met Sally . . . , Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle, which she also directed. Her other credits include the hit play Lucky Guy and the films You’ve Got Mail and Julie & Julia, both of which she wrote and directed. She died in 2012.

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A little note: I bought my copy of this book and Heartburn, along with a couple of female-authored books from a second-hand bookstore I frequent to around town, Keats & Chapman. When I was checking out, the owner told me that the books that I got were de-stashed by the same person. He found it fascinating. I also found it fascinating. It’s like saying ‘oh hey, I know someone with the same reading taste like you’ – and it was so charming (and also the fact that he remembered who sold those books to him). I wanna be friends with that person!

Another note: This is the book that I was clawing at and holding on for dear life to distract myself of the pain when I was having my first ever tattoo (!!!). Nora distracted me in ways my phone cannot. So yes, this book will always be memorable to me. And it will always transport me to sunny Amsterdam in the middle of August. Glad I liked it so much!

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