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Inez Baranay

Sheila Power: an entertainment
 
Published by Allen & Unwin (Sydney) 1997 
ISBN 1 86448 515 9
 

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 ....  The stylised satire and mystery are only part of the plot. Sheila's also undergoing past-life therapy. Each session she relives a sexual experience from one of her many pasts. Baranay lets rip in these episodes with some of the best-written purple prose I've read in ages. When added to Sheila's busy sex life in her current incarnation, it makes a novel dripping with erotic activity. ...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.

- Sydney Star Observer November 20, 1997

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