The first time Mariana Pasternak met Martha Stewart, she was suspicious. The future Goddess of Good Things had shown up at her new neighbour's house, demanded a glass of water, inquired about an attractive doctor (who turned out to be Pasternak's fiancé), and then held her empty glass out in front of her, waiting for someone to whisk it from sight.
Who was this woman, so attractive, icy and self-assured? Pasternak didn't know, but she didn't like her. She was drawn in, though, and over the next 20 years the two would become close friends, their relationship characterized, like most, by ups and downs, marriages and divorces, the birth of children, career successes and personal failures. The relationship will feel familiar to anyone who has encountered the Stewart and struggled to grasp with whether she deserves to be admired or feared, questions Pasternak attempts to answer in her new book about the TV personality, The Best of Friends: Martha and Me.
Stewart, along with the subject of this year's other two other hot, hardcover take-downs - Oprah Winfrey and Angelina Jolie - occupies a strange space in our collective opinion of successful women. All three seemed born for the spotlight: talented, driven, camera-friendly; each embodies a contradiction that makes them as polarizing as popular.
Stewart built an empire by creating inviting home environments, but personally generates the warmth of a frozen pot pie. Oprah is marketed as the everywoman's best friend. But her success has turned her into one of the world's richest people, elevating her beyond the reach of mere mortals and allowing her Midas touch to impart untold wealth to a variety of disciples. And Jolie, the beauty with a Hollywood pedigree, created a brand of super celebrity by revealing just the right amount of skin and bizarre personal information and then cloistering herself in a world of international philanthropy, Brad Pitt and their brood.
We are drawn to these woman, but we are suspicious of them. They can't possibly be as poised, as nice, as attractive or generous as they present themselves to be. And publishers are certainly betting that there is an audience for their public dissections.
The 544-page Oprah biography (called, creatively, Oprah: A Biography), to be released next month, is written by Kitty Kelley, who has stabbed her poison pen through the hearts of such U.S. legends as Frank Sinatra and Jacqueline Onassis. Described as a "professional sensationalist," Kelley's work has been consistently greeted with demands for retraction. Sinatra initiated a $2-million (U.S.) lawsuit after her book described his alleged mob ties; and former U.S. president Ronald Reagan slammed her journalistic credibility after she wrote an unflattering portrait of his wife, Nancy.
Kelley has been working on her Oprah book for three years, and her publisher says she has conducted more than 850 interviews about the talk-show host, although her staff has apparently been banned from talking. But while the author says she is "full of admiration" for Winfrey, some of those approached for information said she seemed to be sniffing for blood.
In August, Jolie comes under the powerful lens of Andrew Morton, who gained notoriety through his books about Princess Diana, for which the Royal reportedly co-operated. Since then, he has received six-figure advances for his scandal-filled books on Madonna and Monica Lewinsky. But the stories he weaves are considered to be full of rumour and innuendo. His unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise suggested that the actor's daughter, Suri, was conceived using the sperm of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. The book was not published in the U.K., because of the country's libel laws.
It is strangely heartening that women are seen as deserving of such scurrilous attention - that they have reached a level of fame that can produce bestselling unauthorized biographies. These are women who have succeeded despite their refusal to conform to popular standards of femininity. None is married, although Stewart and Jolie are both divorced, the latter twice. They have dated billionaires, movie stars (and Stedman Graham), but each has been subject to speculation about same-sex preferences. They exude strength and wouldn't think of apologizing for it.They have built empires and schools, brands and families.anti-feminist and, in the case of Jolie, as a man-eating home wrecker.
Stewart, famously, has also been branded a criminal, the ultimate example of publicly administered comeuppance for a powerful woman.
Pasternak testified against her friend in the insider-trading trial that sent her to jail. The two haven't spoken since.
It's uncomfortable to describe a book written by one woman about another as bitchy. But Pasternak's take on Stewart is too personal, too fraught with history, too clearly the result of real intimacy to avoid the term.
Through her we learn that Stewart had a hysterectomy after the birth of her first and only child, Alexis, and later regretted it. We hear about how she woke up a young Alexis and forced her to bake another batch of cookies because her first attempt was inadequate. Stewart terrorized her first husband and stalked her later love interests. But none of the implied scandal is really that surprising. Anyone familiar with Stewart has long suspected she was less than charming, and followed her recipe for frosted chocolate-buttermilk cupcakes anyway.
The narratives of these women's lives have already been written, and little could be added - real or imagined - that could match our theories or change our minds.
You could tell me that Martha Stewart eats kittens to stay young, that Oprah heats her African school with furnaces that burn nothing but money, and that Angelina Jolie can actually levitate during sex, and I would simply shrug and say, yeah, I suspected as much.
Pasternak may have been closer to Martha than anyone, and Kelley and Morton may be the best scandal-digging biographers around, but these are women most people feel they already know, even if they wouldn't make great friends.
Siri Agrell is a Globe and Mail reporter.