“Throughout my life, I have witnessed many extraordinary events and have met incredible people,” Melania Trump writes in her Author’s Note to Melania, preparing her readers for the platitude-ridden tale to come. It’s a cliché in publishing to describe a reaction to a new book by how quickly one read it, how little one put it down, but it’s true that I read Melania in a few uninterrupted hours shortly after its release. This was purely for professional reasons, Skyhorse having declined to furnish VF with an advanced review copy. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend that anyone else do the same.
Over the following 256 pages (if you count the photo insert, broad in space and content), Trump details her life in words—too many, some might say, and not quite the right ones—though they coalesce around certain central themes: feuds, cheering and chanting, motherhood, her special ability to communicate with Donald Trump, weird stuff with world leaders, and limousines.
The book has much of what one would expect from a partner to Donald Trump. There are wobbly depictions of the 2020 election. (She points a finger at “the media, Big Tech, and the deep state,” and perpetuates unfounded claims of “suspicious voting activity.”) She throws some bones to the trad wife movement. (“It was my priority to safeguard his welfare, meticulously attending to every aspect of his life,” she writes of her early marriage and, later, “My career took a back seat to the most important role of all—being a devoted mother.”)
She dedicates much ink to recounting compliments that people have paid her. Following a QVC appearance, “Callers often complimented my style and jewelry: ‘It’s so nice to talk to you. I love your style; I love your jewelry.’” Elsewhere, she writes, “People frequently asked me about my regimen, marveling at the health of my skin.” She notes that she “was pleased to hear my name also being cheered, amid the clamor” after casting her vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. (There is so much cheering for the Trumps in this book—so much cheering and chanting and erupting in applause.)
Perhaps it’s also no surprise that Trump, granddaughter of a renowned Slovenian onion breeder and, by her own account, possessor of “a deep appreciation for the finer things in life,” is most comfortable dwelling in those shiny parts. Her origin story brims with childhood anecdotes designed to refute the “bleak and inaccurate picture of my upbringing” in her native Slovenia, from her father’s “exquisite vehicles”—Ford Mustangs, German BMWs, a Ford Cougar XR7, “prestigious Mercedes-Benzes,” a Citroén Maserati SM—to the “private nanny,” an alternative to kindergarten, who made elaborate cakes for her and her sister.
Of arriving in New York on a modeling contract, she writes that the limousine her new employers sent to the airport “exuded elegance. I felt an immediate sense of comfort and ease.” On the night she met Donald at a Kit Kat Club party, she arrived in a “sleek black limo.” She notes the two limousines that she and Trump and Michelle and Barack Obama rode on inauguration day and includes a photograph of herself in the Presidential limo, “The Beast.” Her excitement over the great city of New York is admittedly limited, extending “from the chic boutiques on Madison Avenue to the busy streets in the Financial District.” She lingers on descriptions of her wedding dress and her inauguration outfits. “In my couture gown, I danced with my husband to the timeless melody of Frank Sinatra’s iconic ‘My Way’ at the Liberty Ball and the Freedom Ball.”
Amid the glitter, though, the book is bad.
At times, Trump has the narrative instincts of a hound in a fish store, following her nose from one exciting scent to the next, beginning anecdotes only to abandon them. More than once, I found myself flipping back and forth between Kindle pages, wondering if a paragraph had gone missing. She begins one section with, “It was a Saturday in October, a seemingly normal weekend, when my memories of 9/11 came flooding back.” There have been no memories of 9/11 discussed thus far in the narrative, though she does mention seeing the Twin Towers standing “proudly against the horizon” upon her 1998 arrival to New York. The anecdote to follow moseys first through an explanation of the difference between weekends and weekdays in the White House, and then a scene in which her husband invited her to the situation room during a mission to kill the ISIS militant Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (President Trump himself has seemed to conflate Hamza and Osama Bin Laden with al-Baghdadi.) It ends with Trump’s memory of giving a medal to the Belgian Malinois, Conan, but the 9/11 connection remains unexplored.
“It was not an easy process,” she writes of gaining US citizenship, declining to elucidate further. In a description of a trip to Japan she mentions that she doesn’t eat raw fish. Why not? I still don’t know. In a chapter detailing her experience of this July’s assassination attempt, she writes that “it had been a relatively quiet Saturday in Bedminster. Barron played sports outside. I was working on finishing my project.” Which project? Couldn’t say. Repetitions abound: “‘I think it’s very sexy for a woman to be pregnant,’ I told the readers of Vogue, making clear that I believe that a pregnant woman is very attractive.”
She pinpoints the origin of the Be Best campaign to the internet bullying targeting her son Barron, which she called “not only cruel but invasive,” specifically a video of Barron that Rosie O’Donnell posted, in which she asked whether he was autistic. “There is nothing shameful about autism,” Melania writes, “but Barron is not autistic.”
It’s a sad account, but one that falls victim to Melania’s tendency to skate over useful information in favor of gassing up her husband. “I felt that she was attacking my son because she didn’t like my husband,” she writes of O’Donnell. “It all began when Donald extended a helping hand to Miss USA, offering her the support she desperately needed to overcome her addiction. His powerful act of kindness not only changed her life but also sent a powerful message: that with compassion and understanding, we can help others rise from their struggles.”