OPRAH -  a biography
Kitty Kelley
Allen & Unwin - NZ$39.99
 
A big weekend read that I found most asorbing, fascinating really. Oprah Winfrey is one of the world's most influential women.She is fabulously wealthy, owns gorgeous homes, she is a hugely successful brand, she has an enormous influence on popular culture but for all that I wouldn't want to swap places with her.
She has a complicated and largely unhappy realtionship with her family, doesn't speak to her mother, she is distrustful of the poeple around her and is somewhat cold and calculating. 

Kelley's impressive unauthorised biography of her is a big read running to 445 pages. Following those 445 pages are another 80 pages of notes, research evidence, bibliography, acknowledgements, photo credits and index. This is all evidence of the massive amount of research that Kelley undertook.

In her foreword (which I found especially interesting) Kelley says she  "decided to gether every interview she (Oprah) had given in the last twenty-five years to newspapers and magazines and on radio and television in the United States and the United Kingdom, including Canada and Australia. I filed each - and there were hundreds - by names, dates and topics, for a total of 2,732 files". She also has a lot to say about the writing of biography which would be biographers would be advised to read. Kelley has a long track record of biographical best-sellers having written about Jackie Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan and others.
This new book will dominate best-sellers lists around the world in the months to come.

By the way the queen of the radio waves in New Zealand, Kim Hill, interviewed Kitty Kelley in her usual non-nonsense manner for 48 minutes yesterday on her Saturday morning programme. If you didn't hear it and have the time then link to Radio NZ here. It is well worth a listen. 
And the book is definitely worth a read. If you don't want to buy it then scoot in to your local library now and put your name on the waiting list.