What Nora Knew by Linda Yellin

Molly Hallberg is a thirty-nine-year-old divorced writer living in New York City who wants her own column, a Wikipedia entry, and to never end up in her family’s Long Island upholstery business. For the past four years Molly’s been on staff for an online magazine, covering all the wacky assignments. She’s snuck vibrators through security scanners, speed-dated undercover, danced with Rockettes, and posed nude for a Soho art studio.

Fearless in everything except love, Molly is now dating a forty-four-year-old chiropractor. He’s comfortable, but safe. When Molly is assigned to write a piece about New York City romance "in the style of Nora Ephron," she flunks out big-time. She can’t recognize romance. And she can’t recognize the one man who can go one-on-one with her, the one man who gets her. But with wit, charm, whip-smart humor, and Nora Ephron’s romantic comedies, Molly learns to open her heart and suppress her cynicism

REVIEW:
An engaging look at one woman's quest to find love (or at least a good story about love), this book is a lovely homage to all that is great about Nora Ephron. Molly is a sympathetic heroine who has settled into a comfortable relationship with Russell after a painful divorce. As she works to gain her own column, she takes on a series of bizarre assignments to impress her boss; though she succeeds at skydiving, she fails at writing about love until she meets successful novelist Cameron.

This book is definitely an enjoyable read, and it was great to see Molly's growing awareness that there is something missing in her romantic life. The dialogue is snappy and Molly's narrative tone and pointed jokes are amusing. My only quibble is that it reads like a zippy Sex in the City column- a tone I find works better in short chunks than as the structure of a novel. Regardless, an enjoyable book to curl up with while watching the snow swirl outside.