No one needs reminding these days that real life is stranger than fiction. Still, if you do need a recap, I might suggest Melania’s new memoir, which I read so you don’t have to.
Actually, it wasn’t that hard: partly because it’s only 184 pages of prose, plus 179 photographs, and partly because it’s so free of the woman in question that the whole thing slides over you, like JD Vance’s hair.
From the moment she arrived on the political scene, Melania has inspired me, and I don’t mean to Be Best (whatever that means; I’m still none the wiser). I was a reporter in the 2016 U.S. election, and I wound up writing a novel about a cryptic and beautiful dictator’s wife, one who flips between domesticity and cruelty, a woman who’s essentially a Rorschach blot of herself.
Yet however much I tried, you literally couldn’t make up Melania the memoir. Take the moment in 2020, when, with a global pandemic looming, she says without a hint of irony that she has a busy roster ahead: her son’s birthday, ‘a trip to Oklahoma’ and the White House Easter Egg Roll. Oh, and as an afterthought, “Additionally, an official visit to meet with [India’s] prime minister Narendra Modi.” She might be just listing things chronologically, but it sure feels like it’s in order of her personal priorities.
Because to read Melania is to pass through the looking-glass. Trivial things are important. Important things barely register. In her first reference to her duties as First Lady, she says “I embarked on a grand odyssey, traveling the corners of the globe.” I mean, I guess you can view the role as a round-the-world cruise. Alternatively, if she’s into Greek myth, Odysseus couldn’t wait to get home, which actually does ring true–Melania is definitely a homemaker, which might explain why pretty much everything is about her, or interior design, or (preferably) both.
That’s fine, I guess, but there’s no sense of self-awareness that there might be slightly more at stake when, say, she spends a whole chapter on her White House renovations. There are six photos of the tennis pavilion. Of her Be Best and campaign duties, there are four.
Perhaps the best metaphor for her time at the heart of government is the day protestors attack the Capitol. Melania doesn’t hear about it, because she’s busy taking photos of all those renovations.
Naturally, her ignorance of these events isn’t her fault. Nothing is her fault. In fact, despite the deeply impersonal style of this book, she’s most expressive when angry, however justifiably, about this or that betrayal. The other emotionally true moments are mostly centered around her son, Barron.
As a result, at times you can feel the writer turning to Wikipedia to fill the void where her emotions should be. (‘The house in Bedford sits on 230 acres of land…the house was built in 1919…’)
Indeed the main tone is of a press release. As she wins a modeling competition, the photographers apparently cry, “Let us capture this incredible moment!” Of her mother, “She adored the radiant sun, as its golden rays sun-kissed her skin,” etc etc. It feels like a sales pitch. Sometimes it is a sales pitch: her scuppered caviar-infused skin cream launch, which she “hopes” will return to the market.
It’s fine to write a book as a branding opportunity. So were the Obamas’ memoirs – so are most memoirs. She’s just both more brazen and less successful at it. Take that dramatic black-and-white cover: her name as corporate logo. The problem is it just looks like a placeholder until the real cover comes along. Every break is marked by an M, which is a bit jarring when you’ve just read about her mother’s passing.
A paragraph on her work for scholarships for foster children segues into a plug for her own memorabilia, in a whiplash that actually had me staring at the page, agape at its audacity.
It’s frustrating because there are signs of a more interesting woman in there. There are veiled allusions to life being “not perfect.” She stands up for abortion rights, and calls for more kindness online–worthy messages, just poorly conveyed, drowning in branding and product. She says the notorious Zara jacket was nothing to do with her not caring about immigrant children, but a stand against media misinformation. Its slogan was, apparently, “discreet,” which is one word for a message splashed across her entire back in graffiti-style daubs.
Tellingly, at one point she talks wistfully of the Kennedy era, “The idea of a flawless, almost mythical first family seems unattainable in today’s world.” That’s what Melania wants to be: her own airbrushed image. Yet she also talks again and again about the importance of authenticity, of being herself. At one point she says, “Don’t control, communicate!” But be who, and communicate what? She can’t decide – so neither can we.
Freya Berry is the author of two novels, The Dictator’s Wife and The Birdcage Library. Previously she worked as a journalist, covering politics and finance. She lives in London.The Dictator’s Wife is out now https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Wife-Freya-Berry/dp/1472276302
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