BOOK OF THE DAY: Revengeby Sharon Osbourne Sphere371pp, £12.99
THE SILVER-GLITTERED black and cerise cover looks like a whore’s knickers, with a silver dagger running through a cerise heart and the words: “Two sisters. One dream. Winner takes all.” This is Jackie Collins’s turf.
The heroine has ruby eyes and green lips – or was that ruby lips and green eyes? The nipples are pert, the breasts are plump, the orgasms are volcanic, and the men are measured in inches. Not one of the characters is likeable and, despite the “Winner takes all” promise, nobody wins, unless you’re a sucker for Mills Boone.
And yet you keep reading Revengein bed, in the bathroom, on the bus, and devour chunks while you're pretending to be working – like a chocoholic overdosing on the cheap stuff.
Yes, dear reader, I felt cheap reading this book – yet I couldn’t put it down.
Sharon Osbourne is a smart lady and a successful case study in power-hunger, professional celebrity and media management. She's been a showbiz manager, a talk show hostess, breast cancer survivor, reality TV mother and X Factor judge. The first of her two autobiographies, Extreme, remains the best-selling one written by a woman "since records began", her publisher says.
Revengecould be read as psychological autobiography, handled through fiction – so many aspects of Osbourne's psyche are here. You can see her in Revenge's obsessive stage mother, Maggie, who grew up British working class and suppressed her own dream to micromanage her favourite daughter's career, just like Sharon rescued her husband Ozzie's career by taking over his management after he was sacked from Black Sabbath in 1979.
Maggie's two daughters, well-behaved Amber, a talented singer, and naughty Chelsea, a natural actress, seem to be the two sides of Sharon's daughter Kelly, who is famous just for being famous, ever since stage-mother/stage-wife Sharon roped the family into that real-life soap opera The Osbournes.
Amber and Chelsea are also a mix of all those troubled young women you read about in OK!and Heat– Britney and the like.
Anyone with a working knowledge of the red tops will enjoy filling in between the lines when reading Revenge. You can happily guess your way through it, wondering who might be who and what might come from real life, in Osbourne's high-octane tale. You might want to keep a copy of OK!for reference by your side – in the way that readers of post-modern fiction might consult the London Review of Books.
Yet Revengerings true because the author has lived it and knows what she's talking about. If you can stomach way too much information in the gritty sex bits (greying pubic hairs anyone?), you will also be moved by the humanity.
The best part is the vain villain, Sir Leo. Could this possibly be Simon Cowell, or who we might imagine Cowell to be? Could his secretary, Sally, be the fictional version of Sinitta, Cowell’s business partner and childhood girlfriend? Can Mezhgan Hussainy, the younger-version Sinitta he paraded in the tabloids the other day, be just another of Cowell’s (or was it Sir Leo’s) passing parade?
Is RevengeSharon's revenge for a highly competitive relationship with Cowell on The X Factorand American Idol? Who cares? Revengeis so full of sex, it could put you off it. The book has enough of Osbourne's gutsy heart in there to make it work. It's a one-night stand of a book – but one with someone who cares.
Kate Holmquist is an Irish Timesjournalist and author. Her last book is the novel The Glass Room(Penguin Ireland)
