In the annals of wretched childhoods, there are probably many worse experiences than growing up the offspring of a Hollywood star. But Tatum O'Neal's startling and revealing autobiography, A PAPER LIFE, elicits both alarm and sympathy for the grotesqueries endured during what was formerly supposed to be a pampered existence. O'Neal's claims of sexual abuse by a friend of her father, the actor Ryan O'Neal, in addition to being taken (by Melanie Griffith, no less) at the age of 12 to the kind of Hollywood orgy popularly believed to have died out in the era of Fatty Arbuckle, are just a couple of the traumatic events she undergoes before she reaches her teens. Eliciting no compassion from her father, she attempts suicide; when that fails, she turns to drugs, goes to live with her alcoholic mother, and undergoes an attempted seduction by a young Michael Jackson. Later, she marries an abusive John McEnroe, with whom she has three children, before plunging again into a morass of drug use. O'Neal frankly details her remarkable recovery from this catalogue of horrors in this often harrowing memoir, which vividly portrays the sordid background lurking behind the sophisticated veneer of late-20th century Hollywood. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.