Sheila Power

“At last, an Australian novel with a cast of characters as richly overdrawn and brassy as any of the fabulous monsters in an Aaron Spelling TV series. An entertainment is a good description for this rattling good read that defies pigeon holing into any one genre. Our heroine is Sheila Power, a very rich film producer and all-round prominent social identity, who is about to start work on what will be the crowning achievement of her spectacular career. She has obtained the rights to a best-selling novel, one of those cult classics that has captured the country’s imagination…. The stylised satire and mystery are only part of the plot. Sheila’s also undergoing past-life therapy. Each session she relives a sexual experience from one of her many pasts. Baranay lets rip in these episodes with some of the best-written purple prose I’ve read in ages. When added to Sheila’s busy sex life in her current incarnation, it makes a novel dripping with erotic activity. …Sheila Power is a block-buster of a novel, a satirical thriller filled with lashings of racy sex between moments of transcendental spirituality and shopping.”

- Sydney Star Observer November 20, 1997

“Sheila Power…is both a continuation of and a break with Baranay’s writings. … She’s always been difficult to categorise. When she is defined, it’s with labels that can work both for and against her … Sheila is a character we’d all like to be in our dreams. Ruthless and unstoppable, a kind of fantasy woman.”

- Courier-Mail, September 27, 1997

Published by Allen & Unwin (Sydney) 1997

ISBN 1 86448 515 9

Re-issued in the omnibus Three Sydney Novels (2004)