Don’t judge this one by the cover of the first edition shown here. This should have a bright, jazzy cover. It’s a camp comedy of manners that turns into a thriller, an investigation into culture high and low, an entertainment with erotic passages. I’ve been told it’s like Dawn Powell, Absolutely Fabulous and Myra Breckenridge …
Sheila Power has been described as “A rattling good read that defies pigeon holing into any one genre. Our heroine is Sheila Power, a very rich film producer and all-round prominent social identity, who is about to start work on what will be the crowning achievement of her spectacular career. The stylised satire and mystery are only part of the plot. Sheila’s also undergoing past-life therapy. Sheila Power is a block-buster of a novel, a satirical thriller filled with lashings of racy sex between moments of transcendental spirituality and shopping”. First published in 1997, this novel was also noted as being “both a continuation of and a break with Baranay’s writings”. The ebook edition comes with the author’s Afterwords.
Published by Allen & Unwin (Sydney) 1997
ISBN 1 86448 515 9
Ebook
Ebook of Sheila Power available from Smashwords.com and usual ebook sellers, with a new Afterword by the author.
Original edition Out Of Print. Sheila Power was re-issued in the omnibus Three Sydney Novels (2004)
Sheila Power…is both a continuation of and a break with Baranay’s writings. … She’s always been difficult to categorise. When she is defined, it’s with labels that can work both for and against her … Sheila is a character we’d all like to be in our dreams. Ruthless and unstoppable, a kind of fantasy woman.
-Courier-Mail, September 27, 1997
At last, an Australian novel with a cast of characters as richly overdrawn and brassy as any of the fabulous monsters in an Aaron Spelling TV series. An entertainment is a good description for this rattling good read that defies pigeon holing into any one genre. Our heroine is Sheila Power, a very rich film producer and all-round prominent social identity, who is about to start work on what will be the crowning achievement of her spectacular career. She has obtained the rights to a best-selling novel, one of those cult classics that has captured the country’s imagination….
-SYDNEY STAR OBSERVER
