by A.E. Hotchner
Her story opens and closes with Sophia contemplating her father's death: "I had spent my life seeking surrogates for him—in Carlo, the husband who fathers me, in de Sica, who fathered me as a director..." Her father never married her mother, and he treated Sophia cruelly. Yet the actress comes off in these pages as a grand, forgiving goddess. Passages are inserted in the book in which Carlo Ponti Sophia's mother, her sister and others praise Sophia to the heavens. She is proud that she is smart and tough and that she gives love, expecting nothing in return. There is no false modesty here. Indeed, there is no modesty whatsoever. A few anecdotes are funny, such as one about a doctor who comes to her apartment with a frog to administer a pregnancy test. When the test proved inconclusive, Sophia released the stunned frog in a puddle. (He doesn't turn into anything.) Hotchner, who wrote a book for Doris Day that became a surprise bestseller, finds Sophia fascinating. So will almost everybody. (Morrow, $9.95)
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