Se acabó el pastel

Here is the only novel by Nora Ephron, one of New York's sharpest and most brilliant journalists: a very funny, sometimes bittersweet book, written with a humor that has been compared to that of Woody Allen, Philip Roth and Erica Jong. It deals with the shipwreck of an apparently happy marriage, and at the same time it is a colorful chronicle of customs of a certain intelligentsia that lived through the hectic sixties and the Vietnam War and that is now in its second or third marriage -a tribe to which the narrator belongs, knows, loves and ridicules-. The Cake Runs Out was a resounding bestseller in the United States, where it was considered a roman à clef about Ephron's relationship with Carl Bernstein, the famous reporter who investigated the Watergate case. The narrator, Rachel Samstat, a New York Jew, the daughter of a supporting actor and an acting agent (who specialized in dwarfs and scarred faces), is a cookbook writer with more wit than recipes, living in Washington. and is married to Mark, a famous political journalist. She is happy, she has a son and is seven months pregnant when she discovers that her husband is in love with Thelma, the wife of a diplomat. Apparently everyone, including Thelma's husband, knew what was going on behind Rachel's back.