Review: I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections, by Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron's latest semi-memoir, I Remember Nothing..., is another collection of rememberances and commentaries based on her experiences. I enjoyed reading her last collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck, so this was one of the first things I downloaded onto my Nook.

The shorts in this collection are more serious than I remember 'Neck' being. My two favorites are also the longest in the collection. The first, 'Journalism, A Love Story', details Ephron's experiences in getting into writing in a time when women were, at most, copy editors. Her words brought to life images of dimly lit, smoky meeting rooms, clandestine affairs between all-powerful bosses and female underlings, and the determination of a young woman to shove past it all and become Something. In the second, 'The Legend', she discusses her mother's alcoholism and her need to discover if the greatest story her mother ever told her, about how she threw a famous actress out of a dinner party for insinuating that one couldn't be a mother and a professional. You hope fervently that the story will be true, that Ephron will have this one pure memory of her mother's fierceness and veracity that will shine through the murkiness of addiction and professional loss.

Other stories detail the painfulness of aging and losing relstionships that you know will never be replaced. This, for me, was the hardest story to read, as I'm currently seeing several older people in my life struggling with this same issue, and recently lost a woman who was like a second grandmother to me growing up. Ephron's ability to intertwine her wry wit into a difficult topic, making it readable without being overwhelmingly depressing, is a credit to her storytelling ability.

However, this book was not as enjoyable to me as its predecessor. It felt a little like a do-over, since this was the exact same format she used before, and the stories were admittedly less humorous and engaging. It felt at times that Ephron was reaching for material, which may have been the case, as this collection is fairly short at about 150 pages. It very much has the feel of an NPR interview; if you think you would enjoy listening to Diane Rehm interview Nora Ephron, this would be a good choice for you. I might re-read my favorite portions again, since it's inside my Nook and will be with me all the time, but if it wasn't, I probably wouldn't go to the effort.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. A decent collection of personal stories, some witty and engaging, some not as much.