The most publicized aspect of Heartburn—the resemblance of the book's action and characters to those of Nora Ephron's life—is the least important thing about it: Novelists have always plundered their own and their friends' and enemies' lives, and art has no more obligation to be fair than life has. But a novelist does have an obligation to write a novel. Ephron could be taking as her model here the relentlessly note-taking writer in Randall Jarrell's Pictures From an Institution, who thinks "the novelist's greatest temptation is to create." In Heartburn she has simply regurgitated the contents of her diary onto the printed page without giving them any substance or grace. Yet, flimsy as Heartburn is, it's interesting as an example of a certain kind of women's fiction, the rather wan and stunted child of feminism, free love, and psychoanalysis.

In the past several months I've seen...