Mia Farrow's life has been a series of damaging incidents and rude awakenings, which, according to her own account, she has borne with all the stoicism and patience of a saint. I approached this autobiography with a degree of cynicism, expecting a whitewash job on Farrow and a hatchet job on Woody Allen. It's there in part, but Farrow does have good writer's instincts, and paints a vivid picture of the worlds she has known.

And what odds she has faced! A bout with polio at the age of nine. A womanising father, found dead and clutching the phone, trying to make a call which Mia and her mother never answered. A beloved brother tragically killed. And the men! There she is, meekly signing divorce papers sent over with a stranger from Frank Sinatra - a divorce they had never discussed; spending only 15 days with Andre Previn in the first two years of marriage. And we haven't even got to the Woody /Soon Yi betrayal yet. Here is a woman asking to be walked all over by her men - and it seems as if they obliged.

Her relationship with Sinatra is perhaps the creepiest aspect of the story - she denies that she saw him as a father figure, then casually reveals that Sinatra, whom she calls Charlie, and her father, director/screenwriter John Farrow, wore the same after shave, and thus smelled alike. When she is seduced by Sinatra, at his Palm Springs home, she notes that the place is filled with photos of former wife Ava Gardner - who had also had an affair with John Farrow.

Woody Allen gets a surprisingly reverential treatment, surely designed to underline his ultimate betrayal. But all his idiosyncracies are mercilessly documented - there's the Frog Hollow shower incident, for instance . . . There is not a single photograph of him in the book, though his effect on her life fills up a good half the volume.

Farrow's life as an actress receives scant focus, though it cannot be denied that she has both talent and screen presence. Rosemary's Baby is of interest only because it gets Sinatra all petulant that she hasn't finished filming in time to suit his needs. On another occasion, the Peyton Place scriptwriters evidently put Farrow's character, Allison, into a coma so that Sinatra could take her away on an extended river cruise. And what Frankie wants . . .

Irony seems entirely lacking. The last part of the book is a hymn of praise to Farrow the saintly mother, adopting broken, lost child after child, and healing them with her own special magic touch. And then the coup de grace - the addendum, giving the judge's full report of Woody Allen's degree of unfitness as a father.

Fact or fantasy, this book provides some fascinating insights.

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