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In Melania, the former (and perhaps future) First Lady surveys her life from a bizarre and perplexing distance
1/5
While I was reading Melania Trump’s memoir, I thought of Marie Antoinette. Not the historical queen of France, whose reign came to an end after her people, who’d been left to suffer through years of deprivation and chaos, overthrew the monarchy and chopped off her head. No: I was thinking of the 2006 film, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring a cheeky Kirsten Dunst.
For Marie Antoinette, Coppola insisted, was more than just a ditzy, cold-hearted “let them eat cake” cartoon. She had depths. For example, she didn’t just love cake; she also liked shoes. Alas, Coppola’s project to complicate the historical misrepresentation of the last French queen was similar to those who tried to find hidden depths beneath the icy façade of Donald Trump’s consort. Melania’s every outfit, every gesture, every slap-away of her husband’s hand was decoded by body language experts, op-ed writers and “feminists” of all kinds. Look, she’s wearing a white blouse, signalling displeasure with her husband’s immigration policy! This kind of commentary was doomed.
And yet, now that we have Melania, a memoir allegedly written by the former and perhaps future First Lady, that effort is only sure to increase. Our greatest critical minds will be set to work finding the subtext of her every word. Not, to be clear, that I believe these are all her words: you can feel some 22-year-old Yale graduate hovering over Melania’s shoulder, making sure she crams in Donald’s “unwavering dedication to making America great again”, and insisting she write a solemn anecdote about moving to the Land of the Free. “My personal experience dealing with the trials of the immigration process,” Melania says, “opened my eyes to the difficulties faced by all who wish to become US citizens.” To be fair, she writes about her experience selling jewellery on a television shopping channel with identical enthusiasm: “I was excited to share these designs with the world.”
Those hoping for an intimate peek at the private lives of the Trumps will be disappointed. This book is deeply weird. It isn’t clear from Melania’s description of her family members that she has actually met them. Maybe they’ve been described to her by frightened interns. There’s none of Donald’s casual cruelty or rambling narcissism, though it has been broadcast on international television for years. Instead, Melania describes him as a typical politician and businessman. As she relates an anecdote about how they met, she reports that Trump said: “Nice to meet you.” Her older sister Ines is described as “a guiding light who illuminated my path and inspired me to reach for the stars”, which is the kind of thing you write in a high-school yearbook for a popular girl you equally admire and despise.
The banalities never end. In fact, they only pick up as Melania infiltrates Donald’s world, meeting his children from previous marriages and assorted members of his staff. Many of his closest advisers aren’t included here. Steve Bannon is never mentioned; Jared Kushner might as well not exist. The only time Ivanka Trump appears is when she introduces Donald at an official event.
Even Melania’s pre-political memories are lifeless. Whatever darkness she might have encountered while working as a professional model during the 1980s and 1990s – I mean, surely! – is eliminated from view, like wrinkles crushed under Botox. (Another representative sentence: “I strutted confidently in my high heels.”) As for the conditions in which she was raised – totalitarian Communism and political oppression – she seems not to have noticed. The civil war in Yugoslavia goes without mention. “Growing up in Eastern Europe,” she writes, “I never felt isolated or limited in my experiences.” It’s as if Plato’s Cave were her favourite streaming service.
Melania is a profoundly sad document of a woman peering down on her own existence from the penthouse suite, unable to identify any of the figures half a kilometre below, but trying nonetheless to interpret what life might be like down there. She says she’s in favour of abortion rights – the sole newsworthy takeaway from this book – but adds nothing else of substance. Mrs Trump’s inability to put anything on the page that’s insightful or recognisably human is likely related to her failure to be a good model: the dead-behind-the-eyes thing isn’t a tasteful pose, and blank prettiness isn’t enough to sustain a fantasy.
Beware: the desire to hunt for depths within women where they don’t exist is a holdover from past feminist interventions, a wish to humanise the scapegoats of the past. We want to believe that whatever shallowness or stupidity that appears is a survival mechanism a woman had to take up when dealing with a misogynistic world. Well, sorry: sometimes women really are like Marie Antoinette’s pastries, recreated for a film set, and filled with nothing more complex than artificial fillers and dead air.
Melania is published by Skyhorse at £30. To order your copy, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books
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