The impetus for the essays collected in Sister Mother Husband Dog (etc.) is Delia Ephron's loss of her older sister Nora, the firstborn of the four Ephron daughters. Hallie and Amy complete the talented cast: in the Ephron household, everyone was always on. The parents and each of the daughters were or are screenwriters, some are novelists. Delia and Nora co-wrote the play Love, Loss, and What I Wore, which ran for two years off-Broadway and has been performed around the world. (One might cavil with a line in that play: "When you start wearing Eileen Fisher, you might as well say, 'I give up.' ") Delia's movies include The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, You've Got Mail, Hanging Up and Michael. (Who can forget a scruffy John Travolta as the Archangel Michael?)
High praise from their screenwriter father was: "That's a great line, write it down." Their mother scorned housekeeping, attending children's activities and anything else that smacked of ordinary wifedom and mothering. Delia has nothing good to say about her mother; in the most poignant of the essays, she faithfully chronicles her mother's descent into alcoholism, beginning when Delia was 11 and continuing, accompanied by Delia's father, until her death. One particularly nasty exchange came after Delia published her first book, The Adventurous Crocheter, a craft book. When her mother was ill, Delia, at her bedside making conversation, recounted a familiar story in which her mother took the swim test for other girls at Hunter College and they took her math tests. When Delia tells it, laughing, her mother says: "I didn't hate math, I hated crocheting." Such gratuitous cruelties were standard fare with Phoebe Ephron.
Another time, when her parents were in the middle of a screaming fight, Delia ran downstairs to the living room, threw herself on the floor and "flipped out." Phoebe, cool as can be, said, "Get up, you're faking"; Delia got up and left the room. She ends this essay saying, "Which is why I can't write about my mother. I have no idea who she was."
Despite all, Delia and Nora grew up with their senses of humor intact. In every essay, she gets several laughs, often at her own expense. She is also mad for dogs (she has a Havanese named Honey) and has lots to say about contemporary life--trying to talk to someone about a tech problem when that someone doesn't speak your language, for instance. Another essay is about ordering online and having it go terribly wrong. She can find the funny in any aspect of life--except the death of her beloved sister. --Valerie Ryan
Shelf Talker: The screenwriter of You've Got Mail and Hanging Up shares a first-rate collection of essays on family and career, with particular focus on her late sister, Nora Ephron.