Over past few days, I've been transfixed by memoir by Barbara Amiel, "Friends and Enemies." A story of downfall, not a comfortable read at all. But vivid about what it feels like to haver everything - then suffer near total loss. 1/x simonandschuster.com/books/Friends-…
A mutual friend compared the book to the memoirs of the court of Versailles by the duke of Saint-Simon: another unsparing look at ugly realities behind the glitter or high life. 2/x
Amiel is merciless on herself too. She bares herself as she was and is - and is the first to remark when what she has to reveal is not a pretty sight. 3/x
Amiel's career took her from Toronto to London to New York City then back to Toronto. The character sketches are often harsh, but she describes the world as she saw it. One of the many gruesome stories ... 4/x
... is of being invited to a ladies' lunch by women married to men vastly wealthier than Amiel and her husband Conrad Black even at their apex of fortune. The women presented Barbara with lavishly appointed leather jewel boxes. Then said, "Tell Conrad to fill them." 5/x
My own life and that of my wife intersected with Conrad Black's and Barbara Amiel's through many phases and many years. It could be complicated - the references to my late mother in the Amiel memoir flash some claw. 6/x
But we became closer over the years. My wife published this account in 2007, when all the world seemed to have joined to throw dirt upon a power couple that world had once flattered and courted. pressreader.com 7/x
Black and Amiel courted and relished controversy. They accumulated friends and enemies. The friends mostly departed when the prosperity did. The enemies lingered on. Barbara Amiel's memoir asks for no sympathy. She's not that kind of writer. 8/x
Instead, at the end of her life, she invites you to know her as she really is, revealing more of her inner life than most of us ever would or could. And you come away from the encounter knowing more about much, including possibly your own very different self. 9/x
I sometimes repeat a joke I heard somewhere about the society lady who wanted to read only "nice books about nice people." But the world's not populated that way. Amiel extracted and narrated a piece of truth. I'm still somewhat shaken by the reading. Glad I did it, though. - END
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