Her Little Black Book

Barbara Amiel and her boyfriend Sam Blyth walked into the stylish Yorkville establishment and every head turned to stare. They were beautiful and tanned — his shirt rakishly unbuttoned and her flamboyant Pucci dress low cut, with a confident display of décolletage. They had a European cool and radiated sexuality seldom seen forty years ago in uptight Toronto. As people gawked, the pair waved to my host and moved toward our table. They’re movie stars, I said to myself, certainly people who live in a different world than me. I was just a nerdy WASP, barely able to say hello. I’ve since met Barbara Amiel several times, but I never really knew much about her, save for the constant stream of gossip that a high-profile personality like hers generates. Her new memoir, Friends and Enemies, proves that appearances aren’t always deceiving.

The world Amiel describes isn’t the world of a Jackie Collins novel, even though it has similar ingredients: sex, money, ambition...