Norris Mailer worked hard at making her own cultural mark. She had nine one-woman art shows and appeared in several plays. Diagnosed with a gastro-intestinal tumour in 1999, she was given two years to live. Thereafter, with determination and vigour, she published two novels and wrote her memoir while undergoing six major operations and nursing her ailing husband, who died in 2007. … Before she met Mailer, she claimed, she had had a fling with Bill Clinton, then a candidate for Congress. In her memoir she told the story with characteristic wit.