Delia EphronAnmeldelser

So well written with much personal information and a great deal of information about leukemia and stem cell replacement. I could have been put off by the fact that the author is famous, rich, and lives in New York City, but her story and experiences resonated with me on a human basis. She shares her grief and fears about surviving cancer and the death of a sister and husband, as well as the joy of close, personal friends and finding a second love.

About a year after the death of her beloved husband, Delia, then in her early 70's, meets and falls madly in love again with a man named Peter, which she calls a late life second chance. As she and Peter were making plans for their life together, Delia was diagnosed with a rabid form of leukemia, the same disease that had killed her sister Nora several years previously. Harsh chemo treatments brought Delia only six months remission, an Delia was told that the only thing that could save her life was a bone marrow transplant. This was an option that her sister Nora had decided against, but Delia decided to go for it, even though the chances of success were only 20%-40%.

As I said I was mostly interested in the transplant aspects of this memoir, and it was interesting for me to read about her different but the same experience to what we went through. (She even has a Havanese dog, like we do). Unlike me, who wanted to know everything that was going on in great detail, she didn't want to be kept too informed. (She was like my husband in that regard). But her new husband Peter is/was a doctor, so he was able to closely monitor what was happening. She lived under the same strictures we did for many months: no going out, limited visitors (no young children, possibly sick people),no pets, no houseplants, no fresh flowers, no deli food, no sushi, no fruit without skin, etc etc.) One big difference is that because of her celebrity status she had access to her doctors (and their resources) that ordinary patients never have. She had their personal phone numbers and could call/text any hour of the day or night with concerns big and small. (I'm not saying the care we got was substandard--it was excellent, but we were just one patient among many).

A few of the quotes that resonated with me:

"I am officially a cancer patient now....My life is not mine anymore."

"I am living on what many cancers patients live on: the promise of science."

3 stars

Two couples (Lizzie and Michael) (Finn and Taylor their daughter Snow) with little in common, Finn and Liz were a couple for a week or so many years back.
They all decide to go on vacation to Italy. And everything falls apart. Including the point of the story.
Was it supposed to be funny? It barely is. In capable hands - think Neil Simon it would have worked instead it was incredibly anticlimactic.
I didn’t care about any of the characters they were all total stereotypes of where they lived or their jobs.

Siracusa by Delia Ephron was a book that completely snuck up on me. I had heard about it from a few friends, the cover kept catching my eye, and then when I saw it was a Book of the Month pick, I knew I had to read it.

Siracusa is the story of 4 friends- Michael and Lizzie (M is a famous writer and L is a non working journalist) and Finn and Taylor with their daughter Snow. The five travel to Siracusa to rekindle relationships, grow their friendship, and to see Italy.

Michael has a plan though. He is cheating on Lizzie with a young 20 year old waitress. His plan is to get Lizzie to sleep with Finn, as they were once young lovers, so he can divorce Lizzie and run off with his new woman. Finn and Taylor are having problems as Taylor is a high maintenance wife who has changed dramatically since having Snow. Finn is a laid back, hands off dad who thinks Taylor just needs to lighten up a bit.

Things get very interesting when Michael's plan goes awry when something unexpected happens while the group is in Siracusa.

When I started this book, I just was not into it at all. For some reason the story and the characters just were not grabbing me. I found the pace a bit slow, the idea a bit far fetched, and it just wasn't working for me.

Boy was I wrong! About a quarter way through the book, even before the group hits Siracusa something clicked. I found myself tearing through the book and became resistant to finishing it even though I wanted to find out what happened. The ending was one that I did not see coming at all.

The whole book is told from alternating points of view immediately after another character finishes speaking. Dialog overlaps in each chapter as we get into the head of the other person. While one character may feel he/she has successfully tricked another character, we read in the very next chapter that it not only hasn't tricked, but has made the other more suspicious, for example. It was a great way to tell this story.

I really wound up loving this one as it is not only a great mystery, but also a look at what really happens within relationships. Ephron plays with the characters well, so they remain believable even as they bumble a bit. I will admit it is hard to like these four people as they are all flawed, but the story holds them together.

I gave this one 4 stars.

(42) I really did not like this memoir by a screenplay/novelist whom I have heard of but never read. This is about her husband's death, then her meeting someone new in her 70's and getting married, and then her own battle with leukemia and a bone marrow transplant. Her sister was the more famous writer (that I also never read) that died of leukemia fairly recently as well. It started out decent - but it went downhill and became incredibly indulgent and seemingly written for her friends as opposed to the larger public who couldn't possibly be interested in the quotidian exchanges she blathered on about.

There are many reasons why this could have; should have resonated with me. And yet, I thought it was so poorly written - it just did not. The more recent "Between Two Kingdoms" by Suleika Jaouad was a much more poignant and better written memoir of a bone marrow transplant. And Joan Didion's "A Year of Magical Thinking" was better at depicting the grief of losing a spouse. I really feel she had such material and it could have been powerful. Instead it read like a catalogue of visits with friends and an embarrassing revelation of emails and phone calls, texts with the man who becomes her new husband. I thought it was painful to read and would have been horrified if I were this man. And its not because she is in her 70's - honestly, the writing was jejune. Way too over the top with the healing vibes and over the top declarations of love and support from friends. Everyone is just so wonderful, aren't they?

Anyway, this book had everything I dislike about memoirs. I am glad I got it from the library.½

Goosebumps, chills, tears, chuckles, repeat!! This book will make you want to drop everything and become a stem-cell donor, adopt a Havanese dog, and fall in love again at 72. I admit that when I first started listening, I was like, she's not her sister...but then the more I listened (and the more she repeated that herself), the more I realized what an altogether wonderful thing that is. I also realized, after IMDBing her, that SHE wrote the screenplay for not only You've Got Mail, but also Mixed Nuts!! Her writing is so plain but still somehow so powerful that I sobbed so hard one day on my way to work that I ended up turning into a dance school drop-off line instead of taking my exit onto the highway. Highly recommend.

She lost her sister and her husband in short order, but then unexpectedly at the age of 72, she is given a second chance at love. It is an article she wrote lambasting Verizon after a frustrating and aggravating contretemps she had with them, that brings her this chance. The man, who will become her husband, also lost his wife, was wonderful. Then fate strikes and the genetic based cancer that killed her sister comes for her. What follows is a herculean struggle forget life.

Every once in a while, one picks up a book that hits one hard. Is so incredibly relatable that it's uncanny. You see two in a half years ago, shortly after the new year, I contracted RSV and because of my severe asthma, it landed me in the hospital. That night, though I don't remember this, I was placed on a ventilator and put in a medically induced coma. My family was told that I had a fifty, fifty chance of survival. Well obviously I survived but like Della I spent months in physical therapy. Never as extensive nor as serious as why she went through but so many of my thoughts, as related in this book, were thoughts I shared. Also in her book she says, "Trauma is so isolating" which it is, but also, feeling half way normal again, I entered the world of Covid as she did.

Her honesty, her ability as an author to bring her struggles to life, touched me. I thank her for sharing her story, because I'm sure like myself she has touched many.

I first found out about this book while listening to Delia Ephron being interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air program. I immediately fell in love with Delia. And I’m glad I heard her on that show first because I’m afraid had I not heard that interview I might not have been so enamored of her from the book. Her life is so foreign to me. She reminds me of fellow New Yorkers Joan Didion and Fran Lebowitz with their “Only Murders in the Buidling” apartments and their cosmopolitan lifestyle in the Big Apple. Hopping on a plane to the West Coast is nothing, either in expense or logistics. A quick trip to Wales is like going down to the corner store for the rest of us. I just needed to get over that and immerse myself in the incredible story Ephron told about surviving leukemia and the unbelievable journey to get there. There can’t be a person on earth with more good friends than Delia Ephron, and it was those friends and her knight in shining armor, husband Peter, who helped her through the pain and misery of the cure. Left on Tenth is a story that is, in parts, very difficult to read, but the effort and well worth it. I liked Delia Ephron so much after that interview and after reading this book, I went back to the NPR web site and listened to the Terry Gross interview again. And I liked her all over again.

This was a tedious memoir. I would not recommend. Hard to say anything redeeming.

I read a lot of memoirs, and this is the best memoir I have ever read. Her husband died, she wrote an op ed in the Times about trying to disconnect his landline, a Jungian psychiatrist in California read it and wrote to her and they fell in love and then she was diagnosed with AML leukemia, the same disease that killed her sister Nora. Incredible that she could write this book after the years-long stem cell transplant ordeal she went through. So moving to read how Dr. Roboz saved her life. I too spent a lot of time on the oncology floor of Weill Cornell with a family member - it was haunting to read about her ordeal there.
So happy for her and Peter (who Nora had actually fixed her up with when she was 18). It does seem as though Nora is somewhere looking out for her.
The book made me wish I could know her.

I've had this book to read for months. I can't believe it took me so long to start. One of the most brilliant books I've read in a long time. I hope this becomes a movie

Two couples and a child, all thoroughly unlikable, go on vacation, followed by the waitress one of the husbands is having an affair with. I disliked them all so much I skimmed a lot in the beginning, but then read to the end. I did like the device of chapters alternating with each of the four characters.

I only read this because I requested Left on Tenth from my library and they suggested this - I expect Left on Tenth will be better, since it is not fiction and, I imagine, not about unpleasant people!

I had no idea what LEFT ON TENTH was about. I’d read several of Delia Ephron’s books over the decades and been pleased with all of them. LEFT ON TENTH was different, very different. It was amazing!
Books about death and life, sadness and joy can be difficult to read. This one starts out with the exasperating circumstances surrounding the death of her husband, Jerry, when the fire department rescue squad refused to pick him up from the floor where he had fallen and put him back into his bed but insisted on taking him to a hospital, where neither he, Delia, nor his doctors wanted to go. He wanted to die at home.
As she was trying to get her life back, she had a major run in with Verizon as she tried to close one service but keep the others. Following the advice “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” she wrote about it and was contacted by Peter, a recent widower and a California psychiatrist whom she had met decades ago but didn’t remember. Thanks to emails, their relationship grew quickly. It also brought them together when she most needed him four months later when she was diagnosed with leukemia. At age 72, they were married in a hospital as she prepared to undergo treatment for her illness.
Most people have experienced having or caring for someone with a very serious illness. Often, we don’t know what is really happening to them as well as what to say, what to do, what not to say or do, or how we can help. LEFT ON TENTH answers those questions. She tells of the ways she was treated by the various members of the medical staffs as she endured chemotherapy, stem-cell replacement, and numerous other procedures, which lasted for many, many months. Importantly, even when she was ready to give up, she received the support she need to continue to fight. Some of the details she did not remember but was able to rely on emails and input from other people involved at the time.
The book also includes memories of growing up with three other sisters in a dysfunctional household with very creative parents who were also alcoholics.
LEFT ON TENTH is a very important, unique book which educates, raises hopes, brings joy, helps prepare us for our own futures.

Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan co-star in this enjoyable light romance, which features a couple who meet in an Internet chatroom, and communicate by email. They've cautiously got to know each other better, while concealing any personal details or identities from each other. Inevitably, perhaps, they meet in real life while having no idea that they are close internet friends.

It's nicely done, well-paced, and enjoyable for a relaxing evening in with the family. No great mental effort is required, and there are no fast chases or rapid action shots. Perhaps a little dated now, but that's fine with me!

Definitely recommended.

Longer review here: https://suesdvdreviews.blogspot.com/2019/06/youve-got-mail-meg-ryan-tom-hanks.ht...

You truly will read it in one sitting.

Loved it. Audio edition delightfully read by Meg Ryan--that is, as long as you like Meg Ryan, which I do. I had to keep reminding myself that it was about Delia Ephron, not Ryan, or a fictional character she was playing, but she still seemed a good choice for a reader given how linked she is to Delia's (and sister Nora's) movies. Although uneven, as essay collections seem to invariably be, the few slightly frivolous pieces were eclipsed by the more often fantastic. Four and half stars.

It's well-written, with a number of lines I read multiple times just to savor. But the plot is lacking and I was disappointed with the unsatisfying ending -- I read this book for *that*? I wouldn't enthusiastically recommend this one to anyone.

The book is as chaotic as its main character, with a plot that covers the problems of a single mother, adapting to a new environment and job, some romance, and a murder plot -- rather hectic and not too convincing.

The lesson here is to never go on vacation with your ex-lover, his wife, and their daughter. And you're assh*le of a husband. That's my takeaway.

Ephron gives us two couples, four people so well-drawn with faults, weaknesses, quirks, and strengths that you quickly feel like you know them. You may not *want* to, because they are kind of loathsome, but they are very, very real. Each chapter is told in an alternating voice - all 4 adults get to tell the story, or a piece of it (maybe a perception of it?). The central character, though, is Snow, one couple's ten year old daughter, and she has no voice. At least not at first.

We follow these people for a few days in Rome and a few days in Siracusa, and we know almost right from the start that something goes wrong. We're just waiting for the train wreck, anticipating it, hoping and dreading it. The book was, for me, a compulsive read. Multiple narrator/POV books often are, but this one was especially good. I just loved the characterizations and interactions, and I appreciated Ephron's talent in giving each character a very strong and unique voice that made them equally compelling.

4.5 stars½

Amusing book about divorce.

Absolutely loved this book. I finished it and definitely wanted to reread it as soon as I finished it.

4.5 stars.

In Siracusa by Delia Ephron, two couples' vacation in Italy is the perfect recipe for disaster. Two troubled marriages one enigmatic, manipulative child secrets = a vacation to remember for all the wrong reasons.

New York couple Michael and Lizzie join their Portland, ME friends Finn, Taylor and daughter Snow for what should be an idyllic Italian vacation. Told in retrospect from the four adults points of view, their trip starts innocently enough but it is quite clear that, at some point, things began to rapidly deteriorate once they arrive in Siracusa. While none of the characters are particularly likable, they are certainly colorful and interesting and the sequence of events leading up to the disastrous end of their stay in Siracusa is riveting.

Lizzie is a bit of a free spirit whose writing career is frustratingly stalled. Devoted to Michael, she knows all of his secrets but she lovingly overlooks his faults. She is hoping the trip will close the distance that has suddenly appeared between them, but she is still a little drawn to her ex-boyfriend Finn.

Michael is a Pulitzer prize winning author whose latest novel is not going as well as he would like. He is not at all thrilled with the joint vacation and he spends a good part of his day trying to avoid Lizzie. Michael is charming and larger than life and he easily captivates both Snow and Taylor during their vacation.

Finn owns a thriving restaurant but he is surprisingly immature and not overly observant. Fun-loving, flirtatious and laidback, he is a hands-off dad who lets his wife have her way in pretty much every aspect of their life. The events in Siracusa definitely leave their mark on him and he is the only one who makes any effort to get help dealing with happened while they were there.

Taylor is controlling, obsessive and completely clueless about everything. She believes Snow can do no wrong and she is so blinded by love for her child that she cannot (or will not) see how manipulative her daughter is. Dismissive of Finn, she makes no effort to hide her contempt for her husband and she refuses to shoulder her share of the blame for their dysfunctional relationship. Of the four adults, Taylor is the least likable and her viewpoint of the events certainly seems to be the most skewed.

Snow is quiet and unassuming but it does not take long to see how sly and manipulative she is. She takes full advantage of her father's inattention and her mother's inability to see through her antics. Snow is thoroughly enthralled by Michael and it is easy to see how his sudden attention to her leads to her crush on him. Taylor thoroughly underestimates her daughter while Finn is quietly amused by Snow's cunning which does not bode well for anyone who crosses her path.

Siracusa by Delia Ephron is a fiendishly clever novel that is fast-paced and compelling. The characters are deplorable and their behavior is appalling but the plot is so spellbinding it is easy to overlook the unsavory characters. A sense of foreboding permeates the story right from the very first page and despite the feeling that something pretty awful is going to happen, the conclusion is still incredibly shocking.

I highly recommend this well-written novel to readers of contemporary literary fiction.

To the Ephron sisters, everything is copy, so I guess the death of their father told as a supposedly comic novel was fair game. Sorry, Delia, but this was just in bad taste. Eve and her two self-absorbed sisters, talk of the phone and mostly whine about their obnoxious father and resent the time they must spend taking care of him.

The narrator, Eve (the Delia doppelganger), also has the world's worst kid who I longed to see die in one of his many car crashes.

I guess this family is so famous hat they can get anything published. Someone, however, needs to tell them how awful some of this stuff truly is.

While the first few pages on their own might be a little funny, this develops into one long description of children with major issues. Not funny. Not funny for the child, not funny for anyone around the child. Not funny at all.

I was really worried about what happened to the girl after self-imploding. This is the sort of thing that bothers me: after spending months messing up your own life, how do you recover? She definitely grew and she kind of needed everything to implode for it to happen, but yeah.