This should be heart-wrenching stuff, but something about Howarth's voice gets in the way of sharing her feelings, although she tells us about them often enough. Perhaps there is too much information – the narrative plods its way through all her short-lived affairs, extended family gatherings, the firm's business dealings, her real estate transactions – and not enough reflection.

Every memoir is, I suppose, a kind of special pleading, but the successful ones do something to recruit the reader's sympathy beyond alternately complaining and boasting. One of the chapters is called 'Putting Runs on the Board', and this is an apt metaphor: every achievement feels like a point scored, while every setback is someone else's fault. This book consistently impressed on me the conviction that there are two sides to every story, and that Howarth has not the slightest interest in acknowledging that fact, or trying to imagine the other point of view.