Memoir of a scarlet woman

How do we explain our fascination with autobiography? Is it simply the pleasure of vicarious experience, or is it perhaps the self-indulgence of nostalgia, or even the addiction to gossip, the wish to know the hidden weaknesses of the famous or infamous? Oriel Gray’s Exit Left satisfies all these expectations, worthy and unworthy, as it takes us back to an earlier Australia which would appear to most of us remote, simplistic and naive.