She Made Me Laugh
My Friend Nora Ephron
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
“A very personal remembrance of Nora Ephron’s life and loves, and her ups and downs” (USA TODAY) by her long-time and dear friend Richard Cohen in a hilarious, blunt, raucous, and poignant recollection of their decades-long friendship.
Nora Ephron (1941–2012) was a phenomenal personality, journalist, essayist, novelist, playwright, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, and movie director (Sleepless in Seattle; You’ve Got Mail; When Harry Met Sally; Heartburn; Julie & Julia). She wrote a slew of bestsellers (I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman; I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections; Scribble, Scribble: Notes on the Media; Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women). She was celebrated by Hollywood, embraced by literary New York, and adored by legions of fans throughout the world.
Award-winning journalist Richard Cohen, wrote this about She Made Me Laugh: “I call this book a third-person memoir. It is about my closest friend, Nora Ephron, and the lives we lived together and how her life got to be bigger until, finally, she wrote her last work, the play, Lucky Guy, about a newspaper columnist dying of cancer while she herself was dying of cancer. I have interviewed many of her other friends—Mike Nichols, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Arianna Huffington—but the book is not a name-dropping star turn, but an attempt to capture a remarkable woman who meant so much to so many other women.”
With “the nuanced perspective of a confidant” (The Washington Post), She Made Me Laugh “is a fine tribute to a fascinating woman” (Houston Chronicle): “Nora would be pleased” (People, “Book of the Week”).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cohen has written a clear-eyed, episodic, and moving tribute to his longtime friend Nora Ephron, a multitalented screenwriter, director, and author who died of cancer in 2012. Journalist Cohen, who met Ephron in 1973, was one of the few people she told about her illness. Here, Cohen creates a portrait of the Ephron behind the public persona the force behind such success stories as When Harry Met Sally..., Sleepless in Seattle, and I Feel Bad About My Neck. Cohen depicts Ephron as an uncompromising, driven person juggling a family and a career and caring deeply about both; a fierce, generous, and loyal friend who was also often domineering and endowed with a certainty of opinion that brooked no opposition a tough, determined woman, ready to make hard decisions and speak her mind, but not above being hurt by harsh criticism, and insecure about her looks. In short, Ephron proves a complex subject, but one who is clearly adored and greatly missed by Cohen. The most beautifully rendered portrait of her comes in the last few chapters, which chronicle the end of her life. Here, Cohen writes with emotion, perspective, humor, and grace the perfect combination, perhaps, to represent his dear friend.
