I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

and an unprotected toothbrush that looks as if it has been used to polish silver'. English coins from a trip to London last October. Within a woman's handbag, you can read the tea-leaves of a woman's character - doubtless literal tea leaves, from that packet of Earl Grey you swiped from a Chicago hotel room in 1983, along with 'a morass of loose Tic Tacs, solitary Advils, lipsticks without tops, Chap Sticks of unknown vintage, little bits of tobacco even though there has been no smoking going on for at least 10 years. 'I Hate My Purse' is endearing, starting with the title.

True enough, despite state-of-the-art concealers, collagen injections and Botox, the feature that most reliably betrays a woman's age these days is her neck: 'You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn't have to if it had a neck.' While these giveaway striations, wattles and folds do admit to surgical solutions, Ephron is loath to confront in the mirror 'a stranger who looks suspiciously like a drum pad'.

The title essay is typically dry and undemandingly confiding. After all, so grateful is the average reader to laugh or even cock a smile that few will troll these droll selections without being charmed to bits. To be revealing only to the degree that you are funny, never to the degree that you plead for sympathy. The secret appears to be to include a generous measure of beguiling self-deprecation, the humility slyly at odds with prose that is searingly smart.

I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron