Oprah: A Biography BY KITTY KELLEY, ALLEN & UNWIN, $35.
By the age of 19, the illegitimate girl, born to a teen single mum in the segregated Southern state of Mississippi in the ’50s, had already conquered mountains as Nashville’s first black woman TV news reporter.
She was raised for her first six years by her grandmother and endured childhood sexual molestation, giving birth at 14 to a boy, who died a month later. Yet Oprah Gail Winfrey had a dream.
Kitty Kelley interviewed 850 people for this much-hyped 500 page-plus biography and snared both Vernon Winfrey, Oprah’s non-biological father, and cousin “Aunt Katharine”, but not surprisingly, had no access to fiance Stedman Graham, best friend Gayle King or mother Vernita Lee. Blindsided by the confidentiality contracts that everyone who works for Oprah must sign, Kitty relies on barely eyebrow-raising anecdotes – as a young reporter, Oprah pronounced blasé “blaze” – and what actually ends up shining through is Oprah’s unparalleled ability to “come back” from criticism and constantly redirect her ambition.
As the runner-up 1972 Miss Black Nashville, Patrice Patton, (Oprah won, but a switched-vote story bubbles underneath) tells Kitty, “I still remember how determined she [Oprah] was to get into shape … she was the first black person I ever saw eat yogurt … ”
Book Of Lost ThreadsBY TESS EVANS, ALLEN & UNWIN, $27.99.
Taunted at school because she has two mums, choral prodigy Miranda Ophelia Sinclair – “Moss” – is the first lost soul in this study of needy hearts forming unlikely friendships in lonely places.
Finn is tormented by his involvement in a fatal car crash and practising monastic silence, when Moss, his daughter, rolls into the once-thriving Victorian town of Opportunity, rain-soaked and backpacked. Debut author Tess Evans unwinds her yarn about how Moss weaves her magical ways through a town riven with old baggage, healing wounds and bringing hope back onto the horizon once more. A charming read.
What’s Happening To Our Boys?by Maggie Hamilton, Penguin, $29.95.
Let’s say it up front – I feel for today’s teenagers. Tricky enough that they have to find a path through the challenges particular to this stage of human evolution and Maggie Hamilton’s book canvasses them all – drugs and alcohol, peer pressure, porn, manipulation by marketers, self-image, new technology and so on.
And they also have to deal with the constant low-level fear, sometimes amped up to panic, of their parents. Still, it’s impossible to argue with the author’s pungent advice, which adds up, again and again, to reminding us to spend time with our boys, to keep them active and outdoors, to set boundaries and stick by them.
Everything’s going right for Steve Watkins. He’s got a good job, lovely wife, even a touch of tinsel in his life because his best friend is the glamorous Maya, one of the world’s most famous film stars.
No one quite understands what she sees in him, but Steve is always there for Maya, her rock in a world of lies and spin – a world this author, who used to be former British PM Tony Blair’s chief spin doctor, knows a great deal about. All those years of plotting at Downing Street pay off in a pacy, racy thriller that also has something to say about the white heat of celebrity and the way it warps everything it touches. Maybe even nice-guy Steve …
The Last American Manby Elizabeth Gilbert, Bloomsbury, $24.99.
She inspired millions of women withEat Pray LoveandCommitted.
How fascinating that Elizabeth Gilbert should have tackled men first, or rather manhood, through the story of a modern-day frontiersman called Eustace Conway, who could throw a knife with pinpoint accuracy at seven, and by 17 was living alone on remote mountain wearing the skins of animals he’d hunted. And eaten. Like Daniel Boone crossed with Superman. You’d scarcely believe such a man could thrive in the 21st century, but the author met him in the early ’90s when she was working as a Wyoming cowgirl and, 10 years later, wrote this warm and funny book.
This Party’s Got To Stopby Rupert Thomson, Granta, $29.99.
This is British novelist Rupert Thomson’s first foray into non-fiction, an absorbing memoir that explores the impact of his father’s death on Rupert and his two younger brothers.
They’re in their 20s, already motherless, and having come together for the funeral, the brothers stay on for months in the empty family home. Tension builds, knives are literally sharpened as they collaborate, argue and split into rival groups, like three lost boys in a bizarre Neverland – and, above it all, is the ghost of their mother, appropriately named Wendy. They end up estranged without anyone knowing why. The highlight of this book is Rupert’s attempt, later in life, to re-connect with his youngest brother and find out what went wrong.
Read our review of Nicky Pellegrino’s Recipe For Lifethen tell us what you think on the form below for a chance to win a copy of the AWW Cooking School cook book and have your critique printed in The Australian Women’s Weekly books pages.
Mediterranean turquoise cover, splashed with a couple of ripe lemons and the promise of a “summer of passion and secrets … under Italian skies”, Recipe For Life is intended to feel like an invitation to paradise.
A quick dip into its short chapters, each devoted consecutively to Nicky’s two lead characters – wise, old, head-scarved Italian gardener Babetta and mid-life crisis London waitress Alice – and it’s tempting to predict their inevitable meeting and subsequent happy ending, with some brightly coloured bougainvillea and ceramic-tiled terraces along the way.
This is a well-worn path … but the author delivers not only on every sensory front – combining her love and knowledge of food with her passion for the Italian coast (and West London mansions and trendy Soho restaurants, too) – but also with her energetic writing, layering every character with shades of darkness and believable charisma.
When fearless Babetta realises her job at the crumbling Villa Rosa is at risk, she starts to seduce its visitors with food and drink – coffee for the real estate agent signorina and iced lemonade and mint for the noisy workmen. And when she welcomes English-speaking Alice and friend Leila – whose mother wants to buy the villa – with fava beans, sweet baby peas and young shoots of spring onion, there is more than method in her kindness. Love-torn Alice turns eggs and flour from the old lady into ravioli pouches filled with a purée of peas, beans and soft goat’s cheese. Where language is a barrier, recipes are the ingredients for friendship and some female bonding. Cooking cures? Well, yes, it does and, while the soil and sunshine nourish the fruit and vegetables, Babetta and Alice gently knead and fold away their sadness and painful secrets.
And it is here that the tale starts to bite with a deeper resonance. Through Alice, the author explores the torment of a young woman in a life-changing trauma and the unglamorous work of a waitress-turned trainee chef. Added to this are delightful diversions buying “roadside” produce at mountain homes, where Alice is greeted with plates of olives and leaves with bags of blood oranges.
“Eat like you’re hungry. That’s what counts as good manners here in Italy,” says Lucio, the chef, to love-struck Alice.
And by the end of Nicky Pellegrino’s searching lessons in love, we are all mouth-wateringly hungry and ready for a trip to Europe.
Read Recipe For Life and in 30 words or less, tell us what you think of it. The best critique will win The AWW Cooking School cookbook, valued at $74.95, and be printed in the August issue of The Weekly.
Please ensure you leave an email address you can be contacted on in order to be eligible for the prize.
Photography by Harold David. Styling by Lizzy Shepherd
She’s had both good times and bad. Rebecca Gibney tells Bryce Corbett her six secret rules for a happy life.
In the great backstage dressing room of the Australian TV industry, there are those who affect nice, those who are nice – and then there’s Rebecca Gibney. She is so consistently lovely and so effortlessly agreeable that she ought to be irksome.
And yet we love her. We shower her with Logies, make her the most popular female personality on TV and watch her program, Packed To The Rafters, in our millions.
In pictures: Rebecca Gibney through the years
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Remarkably, for someone who appears to have it all, she doesn’t inspire the slightest hint of envy. No matter how much goes right in Rebecca’s life, we can’t help but root for her. Perhaps that’s because so much has gone wrong. She’s weathered more than her fair share of hard knocks. A failed marriage, a highly publicised nervous breakdown, an alcoholic, abusive father and a brother who has undergone life-threatening brain surgery – not once, but twice.
“It wasn’t that long ago that I was in a really dark place,” she tells The Weekly. “And I still sometimes battle demons, but I’ve got the tools now.”
So how does she explain the effortlessness of that trademark Gibney smile? What are the secrets of her new-found happiness? Because, even in spite of her baggage, you only need to spend an afternoon with Rebecca Gibney to come away feeling like the world’s not such a bad place after all. She exudes an incredible positivity.
Like a kindly psychologist or a long-lost friend, Rebecca likes to give. Being a self-confessed “over-sharer”, she’s not afraid to talk.
So here are Rebecca’s Six Secrets For A Happy Life. Consider it the collective wisdom of Rebecca Gibney – the culmination of 45 years of hard-won life experience.
Kindness costs nothing
If you ever drove across Sydney Harbour Bridge and had the car in front pay your toll, chances are you were tailing Rebecca Gibney. As a strict adherent to the “random acts of kindness” school of thought, Rebecca is an inveterate payer of other people’s tolls.
“Back when they used to collect tolls by hand, I always used to pay for two or three cars behind me, because it gave me a kick,” she says. “I used to look in the rearview mirror and see the smile on their face, and I’d just think, ‘Well, maybe that’s going to make the next five minutes of their day really good’. It’s great for your soul to do that.”
Respect your elders
Later this year, the Gibney clan, in all its boisterous, karaoke-singing, room-filling glory, will travel en masse to Europe. Rebecca and her five siblings are joining their mum on a holiday to Paris, Venice and on a cruise around the Mediterranean. Ostensibly, it’s a trip to mark Shirley’s 75th birthday, but, in truth, it’s as much a gesture to thank her for the remarkable job she did in raising them.
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Embrace your past
By any measure, the road Rebecca has walked through life has not been the most straightforward. Her first marriage, to singer Jack Jones of the rock group Southern Sons, faltered after only three years. At the age of 30, just as her professional life was firing, she suffered a nervous breakdown – a result, she says now, of decades spent suppressing bad memories from her childhood. Agorophobic, depressed and too reliant on Valium, she found herself in the darkest of places.
Your say: Why do you love Rebecca? Do you watch Packed To The Rafters? What are your secrets for a happy life? Share with us below.
Read more of Rebecca’s secrets for a happy life in the story by Bryce Corbett in the June issue of The Weekly. Out now with Rebecca Gibney on the cover. Follow Bryce on Twitter @BryceCorbett
Oh so sexy at 63, Susan Sarandon is a woman without fakery. In her varied career, she’s never felt the need to hide who she really is, as she tells Chrissy Iley.
The first thing you notice about Susan Sarandon is how comfortable she looks in her own body. She often talks about how proud she is of her breasts, but it’s more than that. There is something about how connected she is to herself that makes her hugely charismatic and cosy to be with.
She is instantly accessible, perching on a little sofa in Claridges hotel wondering why the green tea is brown. She is wearing black leggings, trainers and an oversized sweater with a cream lace shirt underneath. A curious outfit, yet somehow you notice her, not its oddness.
In pictures: smokin’ hot celebs over 60
Her skin is flawless, her eyes huge and all consuming. She is not afraid to look at you and she’s not afraid to let you look right at her. It’s an open face. No slyness, no manipulation. She is renowned for being a woman who doesn’t fear most things and certainly doesn’t fear speaking her mind. It is that truth-telling that, during the interview, makes us come a little undone, but more of that later.
We’ve met before, the last time a few years ago. Susan turned up feeling sick, had to go and vomit halfway through the interview, but she didn’t want to cancel because it might have inconvenienced me. She is old school – the show must go on.
“I celebrated my 63rd birthday and got blood tests and saw a nutritionist. I want to do a pre-emptive strike on whatever is building up in me, so I’m travelling with this dehydrated green stuff and red stuff, and cutting out all sugar and all liquor. I rarely drink, so that wasn’t hard.
“The bad one was bread. I love bread. I cheat sometimes. When I did the play [Exit The King on Broadway], I got run down and was drinking serious caffeine, so I needed to clean up my act. I’m very susceptible to drugs of every kind. Coffee, it’s great because it gets me very up, but then I crash.”
I tell her I find coffee comforting. It doesn’t make me particularly speedy. She surmises, “You are probably someone who takes Ritalin to calm them.”
When she says drugs have such an effect on her, I ask what kind of drugs she means. “I mean anything! I’m not really interested in drinking. Tequila maybe, but champagne makes me fall asleep. It doesn’t take much.
“When I’m travelling, I only need to take half an Ambien [a sedative] to sleep on the plane. I love mushrooms and I’ve done those successfully, but I don’t like anything chemical. I didn’t like LSD and ecstasy wouldn’t agree with me. I like stuff you can smoke.”
I tell her that I’m the opposite. The stuff you smoke makes me paranoid and depressed. “Everyone is wired differently,” she says. “Some people can do stuff that others can’t. That’s what I told my kids. Some drugs can kill you, some are a lot of fun, so talk to me first.”
It doesn’t surprise me that, seven minutes into our interview, we are discussing chemical versus herbal drugs in great detail. Susan is curious and open. Some things she just can’t be bothered to hide or be polite about. She doesn’t watch her words or think that she has to recreate a cleaner, blander, less-lived self for the purpose of an interview.
Your say: What do you think of Susan Sarandon? Which of her movies is your favourite? Share your thoughts below.
Read more of this interview with Susan Sarandon in the June issue of The Weekly out now with Rebecca Gibney on the cover.
Sacred or oppressive? As Europe debates the banning of the burqa, Erin O’Dwyer talks to four Muslim Australian women about why they choose – or choose not to – wear the Islamic veil.
To some, Islamic veils are expressions of faith. To others, they are symbols of oppression. Either way, they continue to spark debate.
The latest controversy has flared in Europe, where first Belgium and, perhaps soon, France, will pass laws to stop Muslim women wearing the face-covering burqa or niqab in public.
The author of Belgium’s new law argued everyone in public must be recognisable in the interests of security and that the burqa clashed with the values of a free society, which respects everyone’s rights.
In July, the French National Assembly will debate a similar bill to prevent French Muslim women wearing any headscarf that also covers their face. President Nicolas Sarkozy says the burqa is an “affront to French values” and a denigration of women.
Muslim leaders in Europe have spoken out, saying women who choose to wear veils or headscarves will become social outcasts, trapped in their homes, if they’re banned.
“Today it’s the full-face veil, tomorrow the veil,” says Muslim Executive of Belgium spokeswoman Isabelle Praile.
Amnesty International described the ban as discriminatory and as a violation of women’s rights to freedom of expression and religion. “The Belgian move to ban full-face veils, the first in Europe, sets a dangerous precedent,” says spokesman John Dalhuisen.
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The debate reached Australia when a Liberal Party senator controversially called for a ban on burqas after a thief wore one as a disguise. Yet other politicians distanced themselves from his position, saying Australia was a tolerant society, which should respect different religions and cultures.
Your say: What do you think? Do you think there is any problem with women wearing a veil in public? Do you think it should be banned? Share with use below.
Read the story of these four women in the June issue of The Weekly, out now with Rebecca Gibney on the cover.
