Why Not Say What Happened? By Ivana Lowell

It's all here – just not told very well

Ivana Lowell's life story is an extraordinary one, whether it's spending her childhood in the company of her mother's lover, Robert Lowell, or surviving third-degree burns and sexual abuse from a nanny's husband, or being chased round a desk by Harvey Weinstein after he made her "head of creative", whatever that means, or finding out after her mother, Caroline Blackwood, has died, that her father isn't who she thought he was.

A member of the Guinness family, Lowell knows that on paper, she had it all; in reality, she had very little love or security or encouragement. Her prose style, alas, cannot match the content: she has a curiously childlike, prosaic voice and there's little depth or self-awareness in her reminiscences.