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  • Published: 26 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781804999998
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $26.99

I Feel Bad About My Neck

And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman




Celebrating the 20th anniversary of this brilliantly clever, funny book of essays about growing older as a woman. Introduction by Dolly Alderton.

Soak up the wisdom of the inimitable Nora Ephron with this stunning 20th-anniversary special edition, featuring a foreword by Dolly Alderton. The perfect gift for yourself or a friend.

'Ephron has an uncanny ability to sound like your best friend, whoever you are' NEW YORK TIMES.

'The book that most influenced me' LILY ALLEN

Acclaimed Hollywood filmwriter and director Nora Ephron examines the indignities of ageing in a collection of wickedly witty autobiographical pieces such as 'I Hate My Handbag', 'Blind as a Bat' and 'What I Wish I'd Known'. I Feel Bad About My Neck offers the consolation that no matter how much your neck sags, your boobs droop, your skin wrinkles and your children don't appreciate you, someone has been there before you.

Nora Ephron captures the essence of what it means to be an older woman in an irresistible, laugh-out-loud funny, frank and unexpectedly moving book that every woman should have on their shelves.

  • Published: 26 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781804999998
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $26.99

About the author

Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron was an Academy Award-winning screenwriter and film director of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail and Julie & Julia. She was also a bestselling novelist (Heartburn, made into a film starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep), and journalist. Her last books I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing were both huge international bestsellers. She died in 2012.

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Praise for I Feel Bad About My Neck

Wildly funny

Joanna Trollope

An uncanny ability to sound like your best friend, whoever you are

The New York Times

What's refreshing about Ephron is that she refuses to entertain any illusions about the terrible fate that awaits us. What's great about her is that she makes the truth about life so funny when it should be so grim

Sunday Times

Few will troll these droll selections without being charmed to bits... Recall how hard it was last year to find a present for Mother's Day that wasn't yet one more box of chocolate? Remember this book. You'll thank me. It's perfect

Lionel Shriver, Guardian

Nobody does it funnier

Maureen Lipman

One of the smartest, slickest looks at being a woman growing older... a bit like having your own clever film narrator's voice accompanying you through the sticky bits of life: the grief of a sagging neck, the joy of a good handbag, the unremitting loss of a best friend and the effort of facing up to no longer being 50

Good Housekeeping

Lots of good jokes, and a wonderfully amusing read

Virginia Ironside

Had me in complete fits of laughter

Judy Astley

Laugh-out-loud

Glamour

Wry and amusing... brave and funny

Washington Post

Wickedly witty and astute

Boston Globe

The key to Ephron's humour is likeability... she knows that the point of writing personal essays is to make readers say not "This woman is crazy" but "So you feel like that too, huh?"

The Oldie

The book that most influenced me... It triggered me to write my own book, and ask myself questions about who I was, what kind of woman I am and how the world had shaped me.

LILY ALLEN, Guardian

So bold and so vulnerable at the same time. I don’t know how she did it.

PHOEBE WALLER-BRIDGE, Vogue

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7 books recommended by Dolly Alderton

Check out book recommendations from author Dolly Alderton.

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