Reviews
"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 includeSleepless in Seattle,When Harry Met SallyandSilkwood, has brought together 15 essays, most of them previously published in theNew York Times, theNew Yorker, or assorted women's/fashion magazines. She explores the woes of aging with honestyhair-coloring and Botox are standard treatments, as is getting a mustache waxbut 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 . . . " Kirkus Reviews, "By the time Nora Ephron'sI Feel Bad About My Neckcomes out, in August, you'll be feeling the heator maybe just a hot flashin which case her reflections on looking at your saggy, baggy neck in the mirror (she advises squinting) . . . will be just the cool comfort you need. Use this wryly romantic book as a guide to musing about mortality, or just curling up in your empty nest." O: Oprah magazine "[S]parkling . . . [T]his collection is . . . a thoughtful concession to pre- and post-menopausal women (who else is there?) . . . 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 . . . . [R]efreshing . . . witty . . . delightful . . . . 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.)" Tony Bentley,Publishers Weekly,signature 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 . . . . explores the woes of aging with honestyhair-coloring and Botox are standard treatments, as is getting a mustache waxbut 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 . . . " Kirkus Reviews, "Ephron's laugh-out-loud collection tells the truth about agingit's not funand 'she does it with humor and satire and perspective,' says [Roxanne Coady of R. J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn.]. With blithe charm, Ephron exposes all the vain ploys that sheand wewould rather not admit we use to stave off another telltale wrinkle or gray hair. Read her book as an antidote to despair." U.S. News & World Report "Now 65, the humorist offers a bracing take on aging in 15 memorable essays. Her finely honed wit is as fresh as ever." Peoplemagazine, Top 10 Books of 2006 "As if wrinkles and belly flab weren't enough, women of a certain age have to fret about their turkey necks, tooso says the sage, dry, and hilarious Nora Ephron . . . Her droll take on traditionally gooey topics like motherhood and marriage makes the tender observations that much more unexpected . . . [A] sparkling series of essays." Ladies Home Journal "Delightful . . . [A] funny, sisterly collection . . . Where books written for seniors are apt to be full of unconvincing cheer, Ephron's charming book of self-questioning, confession, and resolve faces the reality that she's sixty-five, dyes her hair, and is not happy about her neck, her purse, her failure at ambitious exercise programs, and other personal failures shared by many of us . . . None of these confrontations with mortality is arcane, all are universal, and people of either sex can relate to them . . . Many readers ofI Feel Bad About My Neckwill be familiar already with Ephron the accomplished human being . . . She's one of only a few American essayists with a public personaone thinks of Will Rogers, or Calvin Trillin, maybe Benjamin Franklin, Steve Martin, and Woody Allen . . . [She has] a talent for incisive compression and accessibility confided in a sort of plainspoken Will Rogers manner . . . . The hapless character Ephron has presented over the years may be the real Ephron, or not. The actual Ephron is praised by friends as smart, a perfect housekeeper, much prettier than the person she began depicting inWallflower at the Orgy, her essays from the Seventies, a wonderful cook, etc., etc. It's sound rhetorical strategy. Of all the ways to be funny, self-deprecation is more endearing than satire . . . . All in all, this funny book offers the pleasures of recognition; in an anxious world, her epigrams have a serious, consoling utility." Diane Johnson,The New York Review of Books "OK, so Nora Ephron is 65 now. Not to me, she's not. She's still that young smartass who used to rule the pages ofEsquire. . .Thatwas entertainment. She's still entertaining . . . Ephron's new look-back is a delight of a book that you can inhale in a single sitting . . . . When she's funny, as she is inI Feel Bad About My Neck, she becomes a [writer] who won't give her readers a rest from the bellowing laughter. Sixty-five ain't old when you're Nora Ephron." Dan Smith,Blue Ridge Business Journal "I like short books. In fact, when I'm at the bookstore, I tilt my head to the right and scan the shelves for books with the skinniest spines.I Feel Bad About My Neckwas one I wished were longer. Ephron, journalist, novelist and screenwriter, bemoans getting old and all the maintenance needed just to tread water. But she does it in her inimitable, witty style. You don't come away depressed as much as invigorated . . . [She] brings [her] funny but serious approach to this latest work."
