RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewDelia Ephron is also a chronicler of her life, but one less inclined to focus on the dark side — even when the story is a tough one, as hers initially appears. A lifelong writer of screenplays, essays, novels (blessed and cursed to have followed on the heels of her sister Nora Ephron, with whom she collaborated on the quintessential ’90s romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail), Delia found the source material for her new work from the worst possible series of losses ... I read with a stab of recognition Delia Ephron’s descriptions of the early days after her husband’s death ... But Left on Tenth — though it opens with Jerry’s death — is less the story of a woman losing a husband than it is that of a woman falling in love again at age 72. Delia doesn’t forget her first husband along the way, any more than Peter forgets his first wife, and it is their love affair more than the grieving of their respective losses that propels the story ... They understand commitment. We cheer them on ... If I have an issue with the memoir, it arises from the same quality that makes Delia Ephron come across as a singularly likable and bighearted person. Every page contains fresh accounts of wonderful, kind acts by a long cast of characters — hat tips to her hairdresser, old friends visited in Wales, neighbors in their apartment building, the woman behind the counter at the bakery, the stem cell donor — whose names and stories I had a hard time keeping straight ... If there’s such a thing as a feel-good memoir, this is it.
