"I've had a different life from that of the majority of women of my generation and background. While I seemed like another "nice Jewish girl," underneath that convenient cover I'd traveled my own, inner-directed path and had many a spicy and secret adventure. I grew up in a complicated tangle of privilege, family problems, and tormented teenaged sexuality. After a riotous education at Wellesley, my life was turned upside down by a glorious year in Paris, marked by an intense but ill-starred romance. I spent the next half-decade in New York, sowing lighthearted wild oats until I finally met my true love, to whom I've been married for forty-six years.

"When I was fifty I had an utterly unexpected, almost unbelievable success as a number-one bestselling novelist that has continued for book after book. Challenging, lucky, exciting, and often devastatingly askew, my life seems to have been lived under a wild and antic star.

"I've had as much amazing fun as my heroines, and here's the book to prove it."