The Other Woman: My Years With O.J. Simpson [Hardcover]

Paula Barbieri (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1997

This is the story of Paula Barbieri's relationship with O.J. Simpson from 1992 to 1994, focusing on his character, their love and the trust she placed in him until the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, the trial, her relationship with O.J. through that period and her finding of religion as her salvation. The subtext is the truth of what she and only she knows about who O.J. is, how he behaves towards women and others, what happened to Nicole and the explosive days leading up to the first trial. She reveals that she left him on the morning before the murders and relates conversations after the arrest. She tells how she loved him in spite of his obsession with Nicole, and the story of their abusive relationship. She sought salvation by becoming a born-again Christian.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Here's a new O.J. angle: former girlfriend Barbieri talks about her relationship with Simpson, sharing her conviction that he was the wrong man for her.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

File this one in the ever-burgeoning folder of Women Who Love Too Much. -- Entertainment Weekly

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1st edition (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316651133
• ISBN-13: 978-0316651134
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,019,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars 200+ pages of rehashed trash, December 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Other Woman: My Years With O.J. Simpson (Hardcover)

In portraying herself to be the victim of numerous betrayals by O.J Simpson, rather than evoke sympathy and understanding from her readers, the author merely succeeds in proving herself to be weak, materialistic, and as morally bereft as her lover. Given the amount of money made from the sale of this book, it is impossible to conjure up any sympathy for how this relationship "cost her everything." Because of her willing involvement in the events following the murders, I found her many references to faith, spirituality, and strong religious beliefs to be hollow and meaningless. Fortunately, her readers will not be as blind or easily misled as the jurors who acquitted O.J.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...unbelievable, an excellent book!, September 28, 2006

By 

V. V. Sanchez "vanessa" (california) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Other Woman: My Years With O.J. Simpson (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book, im rereading it now..... Its amazing how one-sided certain situations seem and are presented...but when you take a closer look you see just how something like this affects and changes the lives of so many. This was an amazing book, I never knew, and can only say wow, what an amazing person.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars One last ride on the O.J. Merry-Go-Round?, December 4, 2011

By 

Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Other Woman: My Years With O.J. Simpson (Hardcover)

This is Paula Barbieri's autobiography, including her side of the O.J. Simpson saga. And although it gives the reader a great deal of "the other woman's" insight into the mind and character of O.J. -- his treachery, lies, two-timing, cheating and temper tantrums -- that eventually wrecked their relationship, it also is an honest account of what happened to her during, and in the aftermath of, the "trial of the century."

The short version of her story is that it wrecked her career, her life, and her self-confidence and drove her into the hands of Jesus. The longer version begins with her executing a carefully pre-planned breakup with O.J. -- choosing as an alternative what could have been the beginning of a new relationship in Las Vegas with the famous singer, Michael Bolton. Her first rendezvous with Bolton just coincidentally occurred on the same night that O.J. killed Nicole and Ron Goldman.

Driven back to LA in part by guilt (she had wished that her competition Nicole, dead), Paula's mother instinct also kicked in and she went back to comfort O.J. in his time of need. Her own mother counseled desperately against her going back -- fearing that somehow O.J. would maneuver the saga ending into a double suicide involving her daughter and himself. But Paula ignored her mother's advice and went back to be at O.J. side anyway. This turned out to have been a big mistake, not so much because of the threat of a double suicide, but because instead of getting away from O.J. and starting a fresh more stable love life with someone else, she ended up falling in love with O.J. all over again.

However, by the time the trial ended and O.J. was acquitted of double murder, Paula was again "in too deep" to extricate herself from O.J.'s love, the glamorous life and her own new hopes for a future with him. With a brand new cycle of the same old O.J. games of distrust, betrayal, cheating, lying and dishonesty, and Paula's own life of cocaine and other sins, her life, love and career all spun out of control.

Like the rest of humanity, Ms. Barbieri came from a very dysfunctional family and made many bad choices along the way: endured mental abuse and seemed colossally naïve, in addition to having repeatedly failed to trust her better instincts. For instance, why would she allow herself to be sucked back into the glamour and sins of the Hollywood life style once she was free of it if she did not secretly enjoy it?

This time her ride on the O.J. merry-go-round would teach her two brutal, unforgiving poetically cynical lessons: First, that Marcus Allen, one of O.J.'s closest friends, and the man who probably was the one O.J. expected to catch at Nicole's house the night he went there to kill them, was also the man who introduced her to O.J. However, it seems that on June 12, 1994, Ron Goldman, returning Nicole's glasses, just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Marcus, who set up O.J. with Paula, got away again.

The other lesson that Ms. Barbieri learned is that one knows that she has hit rock bottom when the only friend she has left in the world that she can trust is Jesus. Tragically, that is where Ms. Barbieri's story ends. Three Stars