Brava Bella

I like Bella Pollen for her open-mindedness, self-deprecation and verve. Given her early success as a fashion designer — top client Princess Diana — her memoir is extraordinarily modest. Now in her mid-fifties, she has also published five novels — one, Hunting Unicorns, a bestseller. Unusually, this had a dead narrator, and Meet Me in the In-Between also begins with an unearthly creature — a ‘demon’ sexual predator, who won’t leave our memoirist alone.

It also deals with writer’s block. Scared of psychotherapy (suggested by her second husband, Mac), Bella playfully positions her two literary agents as pretend therapists: ‘Hasn’t anyone ever suggested you might need to work through your past in order to move on to your future?’ one suggests, echoing hubby.

I read the first half with pure enjoyment. Bella grew up in Manhattan, where her father, Peregrine Pollen (whom she clearly adores, but I took a dislike to for regularly getting his parrot drunk) was chairman of Sotheby Parke Bernet in the 1960s.