published an extract from the book. Allan's memoirs were positively reviewed by Marika Sboros, an ex-Rand Daily Mail reporter now writing for BizNews. "Allan's memoirs are well written, punctuated with her characteristic style: the surgical journalistic precision, creativity, biting wit, bitchiness, and black humour aimed as much at herself as others." She continues: "There is an overwhelming unadorned, painful honesty and openness in her version of events and minutiae of the detail, a compelling coherence throughout". Sboros then commended the apolitical nature of the memoirs, citing the honesty of her privileged white upbringing: "She comes across as what she was at the time: not just a babe, but a foetus in the woods of South African apartheid politics." Radio 702 journalist, Jenny Crws-Williams was also enthusiastic, saying that it "has to be a bestseller: tightly written, moving, funny & horrifying in one great cracker that keeps spilling out surprises." Allan's former Sunday Times colleague Gus Silber described the memoir as "A tragi-karmady of epic proportions. A tale of an epoch. So vividly & elegantly told." Rebecca Davis, a high-profile columnist at the Daily Maverick described the book as "truly, truly fascinating." Writing in the Daily Maverick, Marianne Thamm echoed Sboros' sentiment that the affair allegations with Terre'Blanche were untrue. Thamm describes the interview with Terre'Blanche as "misunderstood" and a tool in the "manufactured scandal." She praises the memoir as "searing in its honesty and insight, hilarious and unforgiving." Thamm continues: "It is a portrait of a time and a place, delicately (and often hilariously) captured by a woman who remains undoubtedly once of the most talented writers to emerge from that decade." Thamm concludes that "Allan herself is a survivor, one of those people who, in losing it all, gained herself and more." Allan's memoir has also been well received in the Afrikaans press. Herman Lategan's book review appeared in Volksblad, Beeld, and Die Burger. Lategan wrote that Allan had been betrayed by "Judas friends" over jealousy and that she had been unfairly treated by a "patriarchal and chauvinistic media". He argues that Allan gave the conservative community ammunition as she was a target as an "outspoken" female figure in the public arena. She does not fit the mould of conservative women in South Africa as she is instead "a cosmopolitan mix of Sandton kugel, Mata Hari, Marlene Dietrich and Camilla Parker Bowles". Lategan describes the memoir as "a journal