Heartburn

Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

1. Heartburn famously blends a fictional narrative with real-life events and even includes recipes. How did this unique structure affect your reading experience? Did you find the recipes to be a charming quirk, or did they sometimes distract from the emotional core of the story?

2. Nora Ephron is also celebrated for her screenplays like When Harry Met Sally… and Sleepless in Seattle. For those who have seen her films, what connections in tone, dialogue, or theme did you notice between Heartburn and her film work? Do you see a consistent “Ephron-esque” view of relationships across her writing?

3. Heartburn is a classic roman à clef, a novel based on real people and events. How did knowing the story was rooted in Ephron’s actual marriage to Carl Bernstein change the way you read it? Did it make the narrative feel more authentic or more like gossip?

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. Rachel uses food as a complex language for love and power. In what ways did her culinary storytelling resonate with you? What role has food played in your own significant relationships or memories?

2. The Siegels represent a “couple friendship” that is a central part of Rachel and Mark’s life. What role do you think these kinds of shared friendships play in a long-term relationship, and what challenges arise when one of the central relationships fractures?

3. Rachel’s primary coping mechanism is turning her pain into a story to “control the version” (176). What are some of the ways you’ve seen people (or yourself) process difficult experiences? Does the idea of reclaiming a narrative to heal feel empowering to you?

4. Richard’s advice that Rachel make a “wild and permanent gesture” ultimately empowers her to take control of her situation (148). Has someone ever given you helpful advice during a difficult time? What did they say, and how did you apply their words?

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. Rachel is both a successful professional and a woman deeply invested in her role as a wife. How does the novel use her character to explore the contradictions facing many women during the era of second-wave feminism?

2. Heartburn is based on the highly public end of the author’s own marriage. What insights does the novel offer for contemporary conversations about society’s obsession with and commodification of celebrities’ personal lives?

3. The novel’s characters use psychoanalysis for both genuine insight and self-serving justification. What does the novel’s portrayal of therapy—from Vera’s blunt advice to Mark and Thelma’s joint sessions—say about the culture of self-improvement and self-absorption in the era of the novel’s publication? How (if at all) has the culture of therapy changed in the decades since?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and symbolism.

1. Rachel’s witty, first-person narration is central to the novel. Did you ever find her to be an unreliable narrator, and if so, how did that influence your reading of characters like Mark and Thelma?

2. What significance does the diamond ring hold throughout the novel? How does its journey from a cherished gift to a stolen object and finally to a liquidated asset mirror the trajectory of Rachel’s marriage and her own transformation?

3. The novel uses a darkly comic tone to explore heartbreak, a style that has influenced many later works. How does Heartburn’s blend of wit and pain compare to other first-person narratives about relationships, such as Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity? 

4. Why do you think Ephron chose to tell this story in a nonlinear, psychological way? How do the frequent flashbacks and digressions affect the novel’s pacing and its exploration of how betrayal corrupts memory?

5. Compare the two wronged spouses, Jonathan and Rachel. What does Jonathan’s passive, information-gathering approach reveal about Rachel’s eventual decision to take dramatic, decisive action?

6. Rachel links her emotional agony to the physical sensation of “heartburn.” What does this connection between the emotional and the physical suggest about the all-consuming nature of grief and betrayal?

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book.

1. The novel is filled with recipes tied to specific emotional moments. If you were to create a recipe to add to the book, what dish would it be, and what scene, feeling, or character would it represent?

2. Richard advises Rachel to make a “wild and permanent gesture of size” (148). Her pie-throwing becomes that gesture. If you were advising Rachel, what other “wild and permanent gesture” might she have made to reclaim her agency?

3. The story is told entirely from Rachel’s perspective. Imagine you were to write a short chapter from Mark’s point of view describing the week leading up to the final dinner party. How might he narrate the events, and would his version be sympathetic, self-serving, or something else entirely?