Hooked on Diane

Due to some clever product placement (James Bond and wife bashing) Diane Cilento’s Nine Lives have become public property, even before the reader picks up the book. We know it all: she is a member of a celebrated Australian family and made her reputation in some famous movies; she had three husbands, including two well-known ones; she set up a theatre commune in North Queensland. We even know from the gossip columns details that are not in the book: the farcical story of the last days of her third husband, the wonderful Tony Shaffer (worth a hundred Sean Connerys), his London mistress and the Shaffer inheritance. I flick through the book, notice the enthusiastic style, look at the not-quite-thrilling photographs, dip into the quite amusing anecdotes, and study the index in vain for the name Jo Jo Capece Minutolo, Tony’s mistress, whom everyone has been talking about. She has called the book ‘inappropriate’; Connery has called it ‘a crock of shit’.