Author dies from surgery complications.

January 16, 2004

The author of the novel on which the film was based, Olivia Goldsmith has died.

She had been in a coma since last Wednesday after complications resulting from anesthesia during cosmetic surgery, according to her lawyer, Steven Mintz. She died at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan on Thursday, he said. Goldsmith was 54.

"She wrote these wonderful, celebratory satires, which seamlessly wove her moral convictions and instruction into these popular entertainments," her literary agent, Nicholas Ellison, told The New York Times for its Friday editions.

In a recent interview she joked that she wanted to be given liposuction after her death so that friends could say: "She never looked better".

She also said that death no longer worried her and that "my favourite hobbies are reading, sex and sleeping".

Several close friends were at her bedside when she died. Her lawyer, Steven Mintz, said she had left instructions to donate her organs "to provide future life and comfort to others".

There's some irony here but I can't put my finger on it. Sad.