If there is one truly grating thing about this book, it is the saintly self-portrait the author paints of herself in the main character, the successful writer Daphne Shields. ‘She was a woman who inspired all three. Daphne Fields was intensely private, hardworking, ambitious, determined, visible in literary circles, and yet even if she was present, she wasn’t always really there’ (my emphasis). Which I allow myself to read, she wasn’t really visible in literary circles—because, as far as I know, Steel has been largely panned by the literary critique throughout her career. ‘She always seemed as though she was just one step back, just out of reach, and yet when she looked at you, you could feel her touch your very soul.’ That is, Danielle, the place you definitely don’t touch with your clumsy angling for recognition that you don’t need with the millions of readers lapping up every book of yours. On Christmas eve she’s run over by a car so when the ignorant doctor asks who she is, the better-read nurse in intensive care tells him her name. ‘She almost said it with awe.’ (the almost signals the author’s modesty, unfailingly betraying the exact opposite). ‘Terrific,’ the doctor replies, ‘but she still has all the same problems she had before I knew her name.’ The problem being that she will in all likelihood still not be admitted into the literary canon after this latest effort. ‘Don’t you ever read?’ The nurse retorts. ‘Suddenly a light dawned. His mother read all her books. For a moment the brash young doctor fell silent. “She’s well known, isn’t she?” – “She’s probably the most famous female author in this country.”’ So there you have it, ignorant critics. See what you have done? Now she lies in death’s throes. But rest assured, she will rise stronger than ever, Hollywood will call; she’ll write a real stunner of a script for a marvellous movie and, desirable as she once again is, will have an affair with its male star but at the end she’ll follow her heart and find true love. After all this venom, it must be acknowledged that the book contributed much to the Hollywood studio scenes, and provided some of the keenly needed input-output nodes that glue bits of plot together, in sentences like this: ‘Barbara’s a friend of my ex-wife’s.’