Heartburn

Ephron’s Heartburn is a celebrated example of a roman à clef (“novel with a key”), a novel in which real people and events appear under fictional names. The genre is nearly as old as the modern novel itself, dating back to 17th-century France; Madeleine de Scudéry is often credited as pioneering the form with “historical” romances that in fact took their cues from the high society of Scudéry’s own day. Writers have found the genre attractive for various reasons, not the least of which is the plausible deniability it affords. For instance, Mary Shelley drew heavily on her own circle of friends when creating the characters that populate The Last Man but does not reference them by name—possibly because her father-in-law had forbidden her from penning a direct biography of her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Pabst-Kastner, Charlotte. “A Biographical Sketch of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851).” Victorian Web). The genre also gives writers greater leeway for invention than narrative nonfiction. Many romans à clef are acclaimed works of literature, including Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s