Left on Tenth

Starred review from January 3, 2022
Playwright and novelist Ephron (Siracusa) balances profound sorrow with unconditional love in this radiant account of the “many left turns, some perilous, some wondrous” that her life took following her husband’s death. After a year of grieving the loss of her husband, Jerry—who died of cancer in their West Village apartment in 2015—Ephron reconnected with a long-lost acquaintance, a Jungian analyst named Peter, and was swept up in a whirlwind romance. But their honeymoon phase was unceremoniously ended when she was diagnosed with leukemia, the same cancer that her sister, filmmaker Nora Ephron, died of in 2012 (“‘You are not your sister’,” became a common refrain from the doctor, Ephron writes, “willing me to believe that I can have a different outcome”). Like a scene out of one of Nora’s movies, Ephron (“officially a cancer patient”) and Peter had an intimate hospital wedding. While moments of tenderness like these lend hope to her narrative, Ephron holds nothing back when recounting her harrowing episodes (even sharing a doctor’s note that recorded her “saying she wanted to die”), a rocky road that, after a brief remission, included traumatic stays in the ICU, toxic metabolic syndrome, and an excruciating bone marrow transplant that saved her life. Readers will be swept away by this triumphant story.

Starred review from February 1, 2022

In her new memoir, Ephron will make readers feel, and with her short sentences and matter-of-fact voice, she'll make readers laugh, swoon, cringe, and cry, sometimes all within the same section of writing. The novelist, essayist, playwright, and screenwriter (she wrote the film You've Got Mail with sister Nora) begins this memoir with the story of her husband's death, from his time in hospice, to her grieving afterwards; she also introduces all the people who helped her through mourning. While trying to disconnect her late husband's phone line, she has a bad experience that she writes about in the New York Times. The essay sparks interest in a man from her past who reaches out to her via email; Ephron includes this correspondence, among many others, in the book. The events kick off a new love story that is the focus of the first part of the memoir; Ephron's leukemia is the theme of the second half. Through her own recollections and through emails, readers get to see the hope and positivity of Ephron's friends, as well as the despair she felt during her illness. VERDICT With poetic writing, strong characterization, and a powerful love story, Ephron's memoir takes readers on a journey of loss, pain, hope, and perseverance.--Natalie Browning

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 15, 2022
A beloved writer in her 70s faces life's heaviest weather. Ephron, whose career includes humor, plays, screenplays, and novels, chronicles a series of "left turns, some perilous, some wondrous," that began with the death of her sister Nora in 2012, followed a few years later by the death of her husband of nearly four decades--the man "I'd been looking for...my whole life and he felt the same." Not long after Jerry's death, she heard from Peter. Though they had dated briefly in college, she had no memory of him. "My sensibilities had been so rattled by Jerry's death," she writes, "I could feel that young girl banging around inside me, waiting to take me down." Also a recent widower, Peter turned out to be another perfect match. In fact, their relationship, as depicted in the book, goes so well that you keep waiting for it to crash, right up until they are married in a room at the hospital where Ephron began treatment for the very disease that killed her sister. That particular left turn was especially difficult, and the author decided to have her assistant gather all her emails from 2015 to 2018 so she could tell the entire story. Many readers' only complaint will be that Ephron includes in full more of those emails than is strictly necessary. Along the way, we get wisdom about writing ("Writers are writers first. Before anything else. It's a calling") and charming insight into the relationship the author had with her superfamous older sister. "I didn't think the doctors were concerned about me, because they were Nora's doctors," she writes. "Also, she was a national treasure--a writer and director, reinventor of the romantic comedy, admired by women everywhere. I was just, well, me." Even more endearing than you'd think. Older readers will feel cheered by the story--and the fact that she remembers it all.

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Starred review from February 1, 2022
Ephron should be called the Queen of Second Chances, and long may she reign. First there was the one-two punch of losing her cherished husband after a prolonged struggle with prostate cancer, and then there was the loss of her beloved-by-billions sister Nora to leukemia. No spring chicken when these events occurred, Ephron learned to adjust to her life as a widow while she accepted the possibility that she, too, might one day receive her own dire medical diagnosis. Which she does. But first, the good news. A caustic op-ed about the indignities of widowhood attracts the attention of a man from her college years, and in typical Sister Nora rom-com fashion, a long-distance relationship ensues. Peter's love and support is just what the doctor ordered, especially when said doctor is an oncologist who does indeed give Ephron the news that she, like Nora, also has leukemia. Ephron's harrowing account of coping with multiple, agonizing courses of treatment rivals that of any against-all-odds, true-adventure memoir. Her endurance is nothing short of mind boggling, her survival to tell the tale even more miraculous. Simultaneously spiritually uplifting and emotionally draining, Ephron's account of triumphing over life's greatest challenges is itself a tour de force.

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