Frey Controversy - Par for the Course for Oprah's Books?

Interesting side note on the whole Frey/Oprah controversy.. Last year Oprah reviewed a book by "life coach" and "O Mag" columnist Martha Beck, entitled "Leaving the Saints". She also had Beck on her TV show to promote the book.

Beck is the daughter of the late Mormon scholar, Hugh Nibley, renown for his Egyptian research and his staunch defense of the Mormon faith. Beck claims that through recovered memories she recalls being raped by her father repeatedly. The family says the claims are scurrilous. Even the liberal leaning Mormon muckraking rag Sunstone took issue with the book, which is full of supposed family dirty laundry. The book is also full of inconsistencies. Here's a quick one as an example.

One of the most glaring internal inconsistencies something any good editor should have caught is the account of her visit to the second therapist she consulted for help. She starts out with one of her many pseudonyms: "“Let's call her [the therapist] Rachel Grant"” (234). One paragraph later, Martha is sitting in the waiting room having second thoughts and letting her mind wander: "I wondered if Dr. Grant was descended from former Mormon president Heber J. Grant."”

She then shares an anecdote about one of her own ancestors accompanying President Grant's awful singing on numerous occasions. My eyes flicked back to the part where the author had just mentioned that the name "Grant"” was fake. I wondered if maybe she had changed only her therapist's first name. Later research revealed that the therapist is in fact named Ruth Killpack (and is thanked openly in the acknowledgements for "Expecting Adam"). More than anything, this one self-evidently fictitious passage unsettled me about the way Martha chooses to narrate her life. I am left with the feeling that she never lets the facts get in the way of a good story.

It turns out that Beck started writing the book "Leaving the Saints" as a novel with a male protagonist and then turned it into an autobiography, just like she did her previous book "Expecting Adam".

The Sunstone review concludes:

Martha's case against Mormonism is so exaggerated and shallow, the accuracy of her narrative style so suspect, and her use of hyperbole in such a devastating accusation so misplaced, that I believe she is doing the worst possible disservice to the painful issue of abuse.

Is this Oprah churning book club scandal just par for the course?