HEARTBURN by Nora Ephron

The most New York novel I have ever read

Jun 04, 2025

I’ve loved Nora Ephron’s films for years, and for a while now I’ve seen many readers nominate Heartburn as a favourite, so when I came across a copy recently, I bought it.

Now, I get it.

Heartburn is a story told by a woman named Rachel, who discovers her husband Mark is having an affair with a woman while Rachel is seven months pregnant with their second child.

Rachel is a New Yorker, Jewish and a cookbook writer. Based loosely on Ephron herself, one of her sisters and with snippets of others, I can confidently say that Rachel is a quintessential New Yorker in the 1980s (when the book is set and was written). In fact, this might be the most New York novel I have ever read, despite being largely based in Washington DC.

You can hear the New York twang. The Jewish phrases. The urgency that infuses the existence of most New Yorkers. I absolutely LOVE that.

The novel is loathed by the man Mark is heavily based upon - famous journalist Carl Bernstein, of the Washington Post exposing Nixon infamy (if you haven’t seen All The President’s Men, you really should!). Mark is Bernstein.

I imagine being exposed as cheating on his pregnant wife while she was pregnant wasn’t something he’d have been thrilled about. Oh well.

I devoured this book. I laughed, usually at moments of abslute trauma for Rachel but nonetheless told in such an objectively funny way, it cannot be helped. I loved the feeling that I was listening in to a tough, New York woman absolutely destroying her prick ex-husband. I love the time of it - the early 80s, when things were starting to really change for women after the women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s had really started to effect some change, in a city that was still tough, hard and unforgiving. I beelieve there’s a film version, too, and you can be sure I’ll be seeking that out.

Heartburn is one I will no doubt reread in future, like a comfortable blanket curled around me to delight and entertain. It’ going to live rent free in my head, that’s for sure.