Heartburn

From the Oscar-nominated screenwriter (When Harry Met Sally) and successful director (Sleepless in Seattle), Nora Ephron comes a bittersweet autobiographical book about love and loss. Published as part of a beautifully designed series to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Virago Modern Classics.

A bestselling novel and major film starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson

'I have bought more copies of this book to give to people, in a frenzy of enthusiasm, than any other . . . Heartburn is the perfect, bittersweet, sobbingly funny, all-too-true confessional novel' Nigella Lawson

'A perfect example of Ephron's gift for turning tragedy into comedy' Paula Hawkins, The Girl on The Train

'She is wit without cynicism, the ultimate romantic' Gail Collins, New York Times

Seven months into her pregnancy, Rachel discovers that her husband is in love with another woman. The fact that this woman has a 'neck as long as an arm and a nose as long as a thumb' is no consolation. Food sometimes is, though, since Rachel is a cookery writer, and between trying to win Mark back and wishing him dead, she offers us some of her favourite recipes. Heartburn is a roller coaster of love, betrayal, loss and most satisfyingly revenge.

This is Nora Ephron's (screenwriter of When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle) roman a clef: 'I always thought during the pain of the marriage that one day it would make a funny book,' she once said - And it is!

Books included in the VMC fortieth anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame

About the Author

Nora Ephron (1941-2012) was an Academy Award-winning screenwriter and film director of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail and Julie & Julia.

She was also a bestselling novelist (Heartburn, made into a film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep) and journalist. Her last books I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing were both huge international bestsellers. She died in 2012.