Naked Instinct: The Unauthorized Biography of Sharon Stone

By using the terms ""bitch"" and ""bitch goddess"" several times in his first few pages, Sanello, a former film critic for the Los Angeles Daily News, sets an aggressively sleazy tone to his biography of notorious actress Sharon Stone. Even so, he promises more than he delivers. After a preface that in effect defies Stone to have him roughed up by her ""goons"" and after an introduction that tells a juicy story about Stone's alleged lesbian tryst in a public restroom, the rest of the book is mostly a cut-and-paste job. Sanello's account of Stone's life and career, from her childhood in Meadville, Pa. (which the author calls ""Mudville""), through her early career in cheap horror films, to her superstardom in Basic Instinct, is constructed almost entirely from previously published articles, interviews and reviews. The author's chief original contribution is an unending series of snide wisecracks and asides, which read as if Stone, and Hollywood, had done him a personal injury (on Basic Instinct: ""Another dim-bulb studio executive, who probably makes a half mil a year, felt the success of the film...""). Some of Santello's witticisms have a vulgar brio, as when Santello writes that Stone was ""Pudenda non grata"" in Hollywood after her 1990 Playboy pictorial. But much of the prose labors for effect, leading to such jaw-dropping mixed metaphors as, ""Stone's behavior is motivated by the fear that the career heap that she has clawed her way to the top of will suddenly supernova."" The subject matter and approach are likely to appeal to tabloid readers and fans of daytime talk shows, but chances are, if they've read the right magazines, they'll know most of this stuff already. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)